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BOOKS BY EMILIA ELLIOTT 

Joan of Juniper Inn 
Joan’s Jolly Vacation 
Patricia 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 




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They Found Patience Sitting on the Barn Floor 


f 


THE 

S. W. F. CLUB 


BY 

EMILIA ELLIOTT ec- 

AUTHOR OF 

“JOAN OF JUNIPER INN,” “jOAN’s JOLLY VACATION,” 
“PATRICIA,” ETC. 



PHILADELPHIA 
GEORGE W. JACOBS & CO. 
PUBLISHERS 



Copyright, 1912, by 
George W. Jacobs & Company 

Published August, 1912 



All rights reserved 
Printed in U. S. A, 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I Pauline’s Flag 3 

II The Maples 29 

III Uncle Paul’s Answeb 53 

IV Beginnings 75 

V Bedelia 97 

VI Personally Conducted 123 

VII Hilary’s Turn . . 147 

VIII Snap-Shots 171 

IX At the Manor 197 

X The End of Summer 223 






























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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


They found Patience sitting on the 

bam floor Frontispiece r 

FACING PAGE 

“I wish you were going to be here, Paul” . . 34* S 

“It must be lovely to live in the country” . . 136 v 

Patience looked longingly after the two . . 180 

“Was there ever such a week !”.... 226 



CHAPTER I 


PAULINE’S FLAG 








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THE S. W. F. CLUB 


CHAPTER I 
Pauline’s flag 

Pauline dropped the napkin she was hem- 
ming and, leaning back in her chair, stared 
soberly down into the rain-swept garden. 

Overhead, Patience was having a “clarin’ up 
scrape” in her particular corner of the big gar- 
ret, to the tune of “There’s a Good Time 
Coming.” 

Pauline drew a quick breath; probably, there 
was a good time coming — any number of them 
— only they were not coming her way; they 
would go right by on the main road, they 
always did. 

“ ‘There’s a good time coming,’ ” Patience 
insisted shrilly, “ ‘Help it on! Help it on!’ ” 

Pauline drew another quick breath. She 
would help them on! If they would none of 


4 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


them stop on their own account, they must be 
flagged. And — yes, she would do it — right 
now. 

Getting up, she brought her writing-port- 
folio from the closet, clearing a place for it on 
the little table before the window. Then her 
eyes went back to the dreary, rain-soaked gar- 
den. How did one begin a letter to an uncle 
one had never seen ; and of whom one meant to 
ask a great favor? 

But at last, after more than one false start, 
the letter got itself written, after a fashion. 

Pauline read it over to herself, a little dis- 
satisfied pucker between her brows: — 

Mr. Paul Almy Shaw , 

New York City, New York . 

My Dear Uncle Paul: First, I should 
like you to understand that neither father nor 
mother know that I am writing this letter to 
you; and that if they did, I think they would 
forbid it; and I should like you to believe, too, 
that if it were not for Hilary I should not 
dream of writing it. You know so little about 
us, that perhaps you do not remember which of 
us Hilary is. She comes next to me, and is just 


PAULINE’S FLAG 


5 


thirteen. She hasn’t been well for a long time, 
not since she had to leave school last winter, 
and the doctor says that what she needs is a 
thorough change. Mother and I have talked 
it over and over, but we simply can’t manage 
it. I would try to earn some money, but I 
haven’t a single accomplishment; besides I 
don’t see how I could leave home, and anyway 
it would take so long, and Hilary needs a 
change now. And so I am writing to ask you 
to please help us out a little. I do hope you 
won’t be angry at my asking ; and I hope very, 
very much, that you will answer favorably. 

I remain, 

Very respectfully, 

Pauline Almy Shaw. 
Winton, Vt., May Sixteenth. 

Pauline laughed rather nervously as she 
slipped her letter into an envelope and ad- 
dressed it. It wasn’t a very big flag, but per- 
haps it would serve her purpose. 

Tucking the letter into her blouse, Pauline 
ran down-stairs to the sitting-room, where her 
mother and Hilary were. “I’m going down 
to the post-office, mother,” she said; “any 
errands?” 


6 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“My dear, in this rain?” 

“There won’t be any mail for us, Paul,” 
Hilary said, glancing listlessly up from the 
book she was trying to read; “you’ll only get 
all wet and uncomfortable for nothing.” 

Pauline’s gray eyes were dancing; “No,” 
she agreed, “I don’t suppose there will be any 
mail for us — to-day; but I want a walk. It 
won’t hurt me, mother. I love to be out in 
the rain.” 

And all the way down the slippery village 
street the girl’s eyes continued to dance with 
excitement. It was so much to have actually 
started her ball rolling; and, at the moment, it 
seemed that Uncle Paul must send it bound- 
ing back in the promptest and most delightful 
of letters. He had never married, and some- 
where down at the bottom of his apparently 
crusty, old heart he must have kept a soft spot 
for the children of his only brother. 

Thus Pauline’s imagination ran on, until 
near the post-office she met her father. The 
whole family had just finished a tour of the 
West in Mr. Paul Shaw’s private car — of 
course, he must have a private car, wasn’t he 


PAULINE’S FLAG 


7 


a big railroad man? — and Pauline had come 
back to Winton long enough to gather up her 
skirts a little more firmly when she saw Mr. 
Shaw struggling up the hill against the wind. 

“Pauline!” he stopped, straightening his 
tall, scholarly figure. “What brought you 
out in such a storm?” 

With a sudden feeling of uneasiness, Pau- 
line wondered what he would say if she were 
to explain exactly what it was that had 
brought her out. With an impulse towards at 
least a half-confession, she said hurriedly, “I 
wanted to post a letter I’d just written; I’ll 
be home almost as soon as you are, father.” 

Then she ran on down the street. All at 
once she felt her courage weakening; unless 
she got her letter posted immediately she felt 
she should end by tearing it up. 

When it had slipped from her sight through 
the narrow slit labeled “letters,” she stood a 
moment, almost wishing it were possible to get 
it back again. 

She went home rather slowly. Should she 
confess at once, or wait until Uncle Paul’s 
answer came? It should be here inside of a 


8 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


week, surely; and if it were favorable — and, 
oh, it must be favorable — would not that in 
itself seem to justify her in what she had done? 

On the front piazza. Patience was waiting 
for her, a look of mischief in her blue eyes. 
Patience was ten, a red-haired, freckled slip 
of a girl. She danced about Pauline now. 
“Why didn’t you tell me you were going out 
so I could’ve gone, too? And what have you 
been up to, Paul Shaw? Something! You 
needn’t tell me you haven’t.” 

“I’m not going to tell you anything,” Pau- 
line answered, going on into the house. The 
study door was half open, and when she had 
taken off her things, Pauline stood a moment 
a little uncertainly outside it. Then sud- 
denly, much to her small sister’s disgust, she 
went in, closing the door behind her. 

Mr. Shaw was leaning back in his big chair 
at one corner of the fireplace. “Well,” he 
asked, looking up, “did you get your letter in 
in time, my dear?” 

“Oh, it wasn’t the time.” Pauline sat down 
on a low bench at the other end of the fire- 
place. “It was that I wanted to feel that it 


PAULINE S FLAG 


9 


was really mailed. Did you ever feel that way 
about a letter, father? And as if, if you 
didn’t hurry and get it in — you wouldn’t — 
mail it?” 

Something in her tone made her father 
glance at her more closely ; it was very like the 
tone in which Patience was apt to make 
her rather numerous confessions. Then it 
occurred to him, that, whether by accident or 
design, she was sitting on the very stool on 
which Patience usually placed herself at such 
times, and which had gained thereby the name 
of “the stool of penitence.” 

“Yes,” he answered, “I have written such 
letters once or twice in my life.” 

Pauline stooped to straighten out the 
hearth rug. “Father,” she said abruptly; “I 
have been writing to Uncle Paul.” She drew 
a sharp breath of relief. 

“You have been writing to your Uncle 
Paul! About what, Pauline?” 

And Pauline told him. When she had 
finished, Mr. Shaw sat for some moments 
without speaking, his eyes on the fire. 

“It didn’t seem very — wrong, at the time,” 


10 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


Pauline ventured. “ I had to do something 
for Hilary.” 

“Why did you not consult your mother, or 
myself, before taking such a step, Pau- 
line?” 

“I was afraid — if I did — that you would — 
forbid it; and I was so anxious to do some- 
thing. It’s nearly a month now since Dr. 
Brice said Hilary must have a change. We 
used to have such good times together — 
Hilary and I — but we never have fun any- 
more — she doesn’t care about anything; and 
to-day it seemed as if I couldn’t bear it any 
longer, so I wrote. I — I am sorry, if you’re 
displeased with me, father, and yet, if Uncle 
Paul writes back favorably, I’m afraid I 
can’t help being glad I wrote.” 

Mr. Shaw rose, lighting the low reading- 
lamp, standing on the study table. “You are 
frank enough after the event, at least, Pau- 
line. To be equally so, I am displeased; dis- 
pleased and exceedingly annoyed. However, 
we will let the matter rest where it is until you 
have heard from your uncle. I should advise 
your saying nothing to your sisters until his 


PAULINE’S FLAG 


11 


reply comes. I am afraid you will find it 
disappointing.” 

Pauline flushed. “I never intended telling 
Hilary anything about it unless I had good 
news for her; as for Patience — ” 

Out in the hall again, with the study door 
closed behind her, Pauline stood a moment 
choking back a sudden lump in her throat. 
Would Uncle Paul treat her letter as a mere 
piece of school-girl impertinence, as father 
seemed to? 

From the sitting-room came an impatient 
summons. “Paul, will you never come!” 

“What is it, Hilary?” Pauline asked, com- 
ing to sit at one end of the old sofa. 

“That’s what I want to know,” Hilary an- 
swered from the other end. “Impatience says 
you’ve been writing all sorts of mysterious let- 
ters this afternoon, and that you came home 
just now looking like — ” 

“Well, like what?” 

“Like you’d been up to something — and 
weren’t quite sure how the grown-ups were 
going to take it,” Patience explained from the 
rug before the fire. 


12 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“How do you know I have been writing — 
anything?” Pauline asked. 

“There, you see!” Patience turned to Hil- 
ary, “she doesn’t deny it!” 

“I’m not taking the trouble to deny or con- 
firm little girl nonsense,” Pauline declared. 
“But what makes you think I’ve been writing 
letters?” 

“Oh, ‘by the pricking of my thumbs’!” 
Patience rolled over, and resting her sharp 
little chin in her hands, stared up at her sisters 
from under her mop of short red curls. “Pen! 
Ink! Paper! And such a lot of torn-up 
scraps! It’s really very simple!” 

But Pauline was on her way to the dining- 
room. “Terribly convincing, isn’t it?” Her 
tone should have squelched Patience, but it 
didn’t. 

“You can’t fool me!” that young person re- 
torted. “I know you’ve been up to some- 
thing! And I’m pretty sure father doesn’t 
approve, from the way you waited out there 
in the hall just now.” 

Pauline did not answer; she was busy lay- 
ing the cloth for supper. “Anything up. 


PAULINE’S FLAG 13 

Paul?” Hilary urged, following her sister out 
to the dining-room. 

“The barometer — a very little; I shouldn’t 
wonder if we had a clear day to-morrow.” 

“You are as provoking as Impatience! But 
I needn’t have asked ; nothing worth while ever 
does happen to us.” 

“You know perfectly well, Pauline Almy 
Shaw!” Patience proclaimed, from the cur- 
tained archway between the rooms. “You 
know perfectly well, that the ev’dence against 
you is most in-crim-i-na-ting !” Patience de- 
lighted in big words. 

“Hilary,” Pauline broke in, “I forgot to tell 
you, I met Mrs. Dane this morning; she wants 
us to get up a social — Tf the young ladies at 
the parsonage will,’ and so forth.” 

“I hate socials! Besides, there aren’t any 
‘young ladies’ at the parsonage; or, at any 
rate, only one. I shan’t have to be a young 
lady for two years yet.” 

“Most in-crim-i-na-ting!” Patience repeated 
insistently; “you wrote.” 

Pauline turned abruptly and going into the 
pantry began taking down the cups and saucers 


14 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


for the table. As soon as Hilary had gone 
back to the sitting-room, she called softly, 
“Patty, O Patty!” 

Patience grinned wickedly; she was seldom 
called Patty, least of all by Pauline. “Well?” 
she answered. 

“Come here — please,” and when Patience 
was safely inside the pantry, Pauline shut the 
door gently — “Now see here, Impatience — ” 

“That isn’t what you called me just now!” 

“Patty then — Listen, suppose — suppose I 
have been — trying to do something to — to help 
Hilary to get well; can’t you see that I 
wouldn’t want her to know, until I was sure, 
really sure, it was going to come to some- 
thing?” 

Patience gave a little jump of excitement. 
“How jolly! But who have you been writing 
to — about it, Paul!” 

“I haven’t said that — ” 

“See here, Paul, I’ll play fair, if you do; but 
if you go trying to act any ‘grown-up sister’ 
business I’ll — 

And Pauline capitulated. “I can’t tell you 
about it yet, Patty ; father said not to. I want 


PAULINE’S FLAG 


15 


you to promise not to ask questions, or say 
anything about it, before Hilary. We don’t 
want her to get all worked up, thinking some- 
thing nice is going to happen, and then maybe 
have her disappointed.” 

“Will it be nice — very nice?” 

“I hope so.” 

“And will I be in it?” 

“I don’t know. I don’t know what it’ll be, 
or when it’ll he.” 

“Oh, dear! I wish you did. I can’t think 
who it is you wrote to, Paul. And why didn’t 
father like your doing it?” 

“I haven’t said that he — ” 

“Paul, you’re very tiresome. Didn’t he 
know you were going to do it?” 

Pauline gathered up her cups and saucers 
without answering. 

“Then he didn’t.” Patience observed. 
“Does mother know about it?” 

“I mean to tell her as soon as I get a good 
chance,” Pauline said impatiently, going back 
to the dining-room. 

When she returned a few moments later, 
she found Patience still in the pantry, sitting 


16 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


thoughtfully on the old, blue sugar bucket. 
“I know,” Patience announced triumphantly. 
“You’ve been writing to Uncle Paul!” 

Pauline gasped and fled to the kitchen; 
there were times when flight was the better 
part of discretion, in dealing with the youngest 
member of the Shaw family. 

On the whole, Patience behaved very well 
that evening, only, on going to bid her father 
good-night, did she ask anxiously, how long 
it took to send a letter to New York and get 
an answer. 

“That depends considerably upon the 
promptness with which the party written to 
answers the letter,” Mr. Shaw told her. 

“A week?” Patience questioned. 

“Probably — if not longer.” 

Patience sighed. 

“Have you been writing a letter to some- 
one in New York?” her father asked. 

“No, indeed,” the child said gravely, 
“but,” she looked up, answering his glance. 
“Paul didn’t tell me, father; I — guessed. 
Uncle Paul does live in New York, doesn’t 
he?” 


PAULINE-’ S FLAG 17 

“Yes,” Mr. Shaw answered, almost sharply. 
“Now run to bed, my dear.” 

But when the stairs were reached, Patience 
most certainly did not run. “I think people 
are very queer,” she said to herself, “they seem 
to think ten years isn’t a bit more grown-up 
than six or seven.” 

“Mummy,” she asked, when later her mother 
came to take away her light, “father and 
Uncle Paul are brethren, aren’t they?” 

“My dear ! What put that into your head ?” 

“Aren’t they?” 

“Certainly, dear.” 

“Then why don’t they ‘dwell together in 
unity’ ?” 

“Patience!” Mrs. Shaw stared down at the 
sharp inquisitive little face. 

“Why don’t they?” Patience persisted. If 
persistency be a virtue* Patience was to be 
highly commended. 

“My dear, who has said that they do not?” 

Patience shrugged; as if things had always 
to be said. “But, mummy — ” 

“Go to sleep now, dear.” Mrs. Shaw bent 
to kiss her good-night. 


18 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“All the same,” Patience confided to the 
darkness, “I know they don’t.” She gave a 
little shiver of delight — something very 
mysterious was afoot evidently. 

Out on the landing, Mrs. Shaw found 
Pauline waiting for her. “Come into your 
room, mother, please, I’ve started up the fire; 
I want to tell you something.” 

“I thought as much,” her mother answered. 
She sat down in the big armchair and Pau- 
line drew up before the fire. “I’ve been ex- 
pecting it all the evening.” 

Pauline dropped down on the floor, her 
head against her mother’s knee. “This fam- 
ily is dreadfully keen-sighted. Mother dear, 
please don’t be angry — ” and Pauline made 
confession. 

When she had finished, Mrs. Shaw sat for 
some moments, as her husband had done, her 
eyes on the fire. “You told him that we could 
not manage it, Pauline?” she said at last. 
“My dear, how could you!” 

“But, mother dear, I was — desperate; some- 
thing has to be done for — Hilary, and I had 
to do it!” 


PAULINE’S FLAG 


19 


“Do you suppose your father and I do not 
realize that quite as well as you do, Pauline?” 

“You and I have talked it over and over, 
and father never says — anything.” 

“Not to you, perhaps; but he is giving the 
matter very careful consideration, and later 
he hopes — ” 

“Mother dear, that is so indefinite!” Pau- 
line broke in. “And I can’t see — Father is 
Uncle Paul’s only brother! If I were rich, and 
Hilary were not and needed things, I would 
want her to let me know.” 

“It is possible, that under certain conditions, 
Hilary would not wish you to know.” Mrs. 
Shaw hesitated, then she said slowly, “You 
know, Pauline, that your uncle is much older 
than your father; so much older, that he seemed 
to stand — when your father was a boy — more 
in the light of a father to him, than an older 
brother. He was much opposed to your fa- 
ther’s going into the ministry, he wanted him 
to go into business with him. He is a strong- 
willed man, and does not easily relinquish any 
plan of his own making. It went hard with 
him, when your father refused to yield; later, 


20 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


when your father received the call to this 
parish, your uncle quite as strongly opposed 
his accepting it — burying himself alive in a 
little out-of-the-way hole, he called it. It 
came to the point, finally, on your uncle’s in- 
sisting on his making it a choice between him- 
self and Winton. He refused to ever come 
near the place and the two or three letters 
your father wrote at first remained unan- 
swered. The breach between them has been 
one of the hardest trials your father has had 
to bear.” 

“Oh,” Pauline cried miserably, “what a hor- 
rid interfering thing father must think me! 
Bushing in where I had no right to! I wish 
I’d known — I just thought — you see, father 
speaks of Uncle Paul now and then — that may- 
be they’d only — grown apart — and that if 
Uncle Paul knew! But perhaps my letter 
will get lost. It would serve me right; and 
yet, if it does, I’m afraid I can’t help feel- 
ing somewhat disappointed — on Hilary’s ac- 
count.” 

Her mother smiled. “We can only wait 
and see. I would rather you said nothing of 


PAULINE’S FLAG 


21 


what I have been telling you to either Hilary 
or Patience, Pauline.” 

“I won’t, Mother Shaw. It seems I have a 
lot of secrets from Hilary. And I won’t write 
any more such letters without consulting you 
or father, you can depend on that.” 

Mr. Paul Shaw’s answer did not come with- 
in the allotted week. It was the longest week 
Pauline had ever known ; and when the second 
went by and still no word from her uncle, the 
waiting and uncertainty became very hard to 
bear, all the harder, that her usual confidant, 
Hilary, must not be allowed to suspect any- 
thing. 

The weather had turned suddenly warm, and 
Hilary’s listlessness had increased proportion- 
ately, which probably accounted for the dying 
out of what little interest she had felt at first 
in Patience’s “mysterious letter.” 

Patience, herself, was doing her best to play 
fair; fortunately, she was in school the greater 
part of the day, else the strain upon her pow- 
ers of self-control might have proved too 
heavy. 

“Mother,” Pauline said one evening, linger- 


22 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


ing in her mother’s room, after Hilary had 
gone to bed, “I don’t believe Uncle Paul 
means answering at all. I wish I’d never 
asked him to do anything.” 

“So do I, Pauline. Still it is rather early 
yet for you to give up hope. It’s hard wait- 
ing, I know, dear, but that is something we 
all have to learn to do, sooner or later.” 

“I don’t think ‘no news is good news,’ ” 
Pauline said; then she brightened. “Oh, 
Mother Shaw! Suppose the letter is on the 
way now, and that Hilary is to have a sea 
voyage! Youd have to go, too.” 

“Pauline, Pauline, not so fast! Listen, 
dear, we might send Hilary out to The Maples 
for a week or two. Mrs. Boyd would be de- 
lighted to have her; and it wouldn’t be too 
far away, in case we should be getting her 
ready for that — sea voyage.” 

“I don’t believe she’d care to go ; it’s quieter 
than here at home.” 

“But it would be a change. I believe I’ll 
suggest it to her in the morning.” 

But when Mrs. Shaw did suggest it the next 
morning, Hilary was quite of Pauline’s opin- 


PAULINE’S FLAG 


23 


ion. “ I shouldn’t like it a bit, mother! It 
would be worse than home — duller, I mean; 
and Mrs. Boyd would fuss over me so,” she 
said impatiently. 

“You used to like going there, Hilary.” 

“Mother, you can’t want me to go.” 

“I think it might do you good, Hilary. I 
should like you to try it.” 

“Please, mother, I don’t see the use of 
bothering with little half-way things.” 

“I do, Hilary, when they are the only ones 
within reach.” 

The girl moved restlessly, settling her ham- 
mock cushions; then she lay looking out over 
the sunny garden with discontented eyes. 

It was a large old-fashioned garden, sep- 
arated on the further side by a low hedge 
from the old ivy-covered church. On the back 
steps of the church, Sextoness Jane was shak- 
ing out her duster. She was old and gray and 
insignificant looking; her duties as sexton, in 
which she had succeeded her father, were her 
great delight. The will with which she sang 
and worked now seemed to have in it some- 
thing of reproach for the girl stretched out 


24 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


idly in the hammock. Nothing more than 
half-way things, and not too many of those, 
had ever come Sextoness Jane’s way. Yet 
she was singing now over her work. 

Hilary moved impatiently, turning her 
back on the garden and the bent old figure 
moving about in the church beyond ; but, some- 
how, she couldn’t turn her back on what that 
bent old figure had suddenly come to stand 
for. 

Fifteen minutes later, she sat up, pushing 
herself slowly back and forth. “ I wish Jane 
had chosen any other morning to clean the 
church in. Mother Shaw!” she protested with 
spirit. 

Her mother looked up from her mending. 
“Why, dear? It is her regular day.” 

“Couldn’t she do it, I wonder, on an ir- 
regular day! Anyhow, if she had, I shouldn’t 
have to go to The Maples this afternoon. 
Must I take a trunk, mother?” 

“Hilary! But what has Jane to do with 
your going?” 

“Pretty nearly everything, I reckon. Must 
I, mother?” 


PAULINE’S FLAG 


25 


“No, indeed, dear; and you are not to go 
at all, unless you can do it willingly.” 

“Oh, I’m fairly resigned; don’t press me too 
hard, Mother Shaw. I think I’ll go tell Paul 
now.” 

“Well,” Pauline said, “I’m glad you’ve de- 
cided to go, Hilary. I — that is, maybe it 
won’t be for very long.” 


















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CHAPTER II 


THE MAPLES 
















































































































































































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CHAPTER II 


THE MAPLES 

That afternoon Pauline drove Hilary out 
to the big, busy, pleasant farm, called The 
Maples. 

As they jogged slowly down the one prin- 
cipal street of the sleepy, old town, Pauline 
tried to imagine that presently they would 
turn off down the by-road, leading to the sta- 
tion. Through the still air came the sound of 
the afternoon train, panting and puffing to 
be off with as much importance as the big 
train, which later, it would connect with down 
at the junction. 

“Paul,” Hilary asked suddenly, “what are 
you thinking about?” 

Pauline slapped the reins lightly across old 
Fanny’s plump sides. “Oh, different things — 
traveling for one.” Suppose Uncle Paul’s 
letter should come in this afternoon’s mail! 


30 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


That she would find it waiting for her when 
she got home! 

“So was I,” Hilary said. “I was wishing 
that you and I were going off on that train, 
Paul.” 

“Where to?” Paul asked. After all, it 
couldn’t do any harm — Hilary would think it 
one of their “pretend” talks, and it would be 
nice to have some definite basis to build on 
later. 

“Anywhere,” Hilary answered. “I would 
like to go to the seashore somewhere ; but most 
anywhere, where there were people and inter- 
esting things to do and see, would do.” 

“Yes,” Pauline agreed. 

“There’s Josie,” Hilary said, and her sister 
drew rein, as a girl came to the edge of the 
walk to speak to them. 

“Going away?” she asked, catching sight of 
the valise. 

“Only out to the Boyds’,” Pauline told her, 
“to leave Hilary.” 

Josie shifted the strap of school-books un- 
der her arm impatiently. “ ‘Only!’ ” she re- 
peated. “Well, I just wish I was going, too; 


THE MAPLES 


31 


it’s a deal pleasanter out there, than in a 
stuffy school room these days.” 

“It’s stupid — and you both know it,” 
Hilary protested. She glanced enviously at 
Josie’s strap of books. “And when school 
closes, you’ll be through for good, Josie Brice. 
We shan’t finish together, after all, now.” 

“Oh, I’m not through yet,” Josie assured 
her. “Father’ll be going out past The Maples 
Saturday morning, I’ll get him to take me 
along.” 

Hilary brightened. “Don’t forget,” she 
urged, and as she and Pauline drove on, she 
added, “I suppose I can stick it out for a 
week.” 

“Well, I should think as much. Will you 
go on, Fanny!” Pauline slapped the dignified, 
complacent Fanny with rather more severity 
than before. “She’s one great mass of lazi- 
ness,” she declared. “Father’s spoiled her a 
great deal more than he ever has any of us.” 

It was a three-mile drive from the village 
to The Maples, through pleasant winding 
roads, hardly deserving of a more important 
title than lane. Now and then, from the top 


32 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


of a low hill, they caught a glimpse of the great 
lake beyond, shining in the afternoon sunlight^ 
a little ruffled by the light breeze sweeping 
down to it from the mountains bordering it on 
the further side. 

Hilary leaned back in the wide shaded gig; 
she looked tired, and yet the new touch of 
color in her cheeks was not altogether due to 
weariness. “The ride’s done you good,” Pau 
line said. 

“I wonder what there’ll be for supper,” 
Hilary remarked. “You’ll stay, Paul?” 

“If you promise to eat a good one.” It 
was comforting to have Hilary actually won- 
dering what they would have. 

They had reached the broad avenue of 
maples leading from the road up to the house. 
It was a long, low, weather-stained house, 
breathing an unmistakable air of generous and 
warm-hearted hospitality. Pauline never 
came to it, without a sense of pity for the 
kindly elderly couple, who were so fond of 
young folks, and who had none of their own. 

Mrs. Boyd had seen them coming, and she 
came out to meet them, as they turned into the 


tHE MAPLES 


33 


dooryard. And an old dog, sunning himself 
on the doorstep, rose with a slow wag of wel- 
come. 

“Mother’s sent you something she was sure 
you would like to have,” Pauline said. 
“Please, will you take in a visitor for a few 
days?” she added, laying a hand on Hilary’s. 

“You’ve brought Hilary out to stop?” Mrs. 
Boyd cried delightedly. “Now I call that 
mighty good of your mother. You come right 
’long in, both of you: you’re sure you can’t 
stop, too, Pauline?” 

“Only to supper, thank you.” 

Mrs. Boyd had the big valise out from un- 
der the seat by now. “Come right ’long in,” 
she repeated. “You’re tired, aren’t you, 
Hilary? Buka good night’s rest’ll set you up 
wonderful. Take her into the spare room, 
Pauline. Dear me, I must have felt you was 
coming, seeing that I aired it out beautiful 
only this morning. I’ll go call Mr. Boyd to 
take Fanny to the barn.” 

“Isn’t she the dearest thing!” Pauline de- 
clared, as she and Hilary went indoors. 

The spare room was back of the parlor, a 


34 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


large comfortable room, with broad windows 
facing south and west, and a small vine- 
covered porch all it’s own on the south side of 
the room. 

Pauline pulled forward a great chintz- 
cushioned rocker, putting her sister into it, 
and opened the porch door. Beyond lay a 
wide, sloping meadow and beyond the meadow, 
the lake sparkled and rippled in the sunshine. 

“If you’re not contented here, Hilary 
Shaw!” Pauline said, standing in the low door- 
way. “Suppose you pretend you’ve never 
been here before! I reckon you’d travel a 
long ways to find a nicer place to stay in.” 

“I shouldn’t doubt it if you were going to 
stay with me, Paul; I know I’m going to be 
homesick.” 

Pauline stretched out a hand to Captain, 
the old dog, who had come around to pay his 
compliments. Captain liked visitors — when 
he was convinced that they really were visitors, 
not peddlers, nor agents, quite as well as his 
master and mistress did. “You’d be home- 
sick enough, if you really were off on your 
travels — you’d better get used to it. Hadn’t 



66 


I Wish You Were Going to be Here, Paul” 









■ 























































THE MAPLES 


35 


she, Captain?” Pauline went to unpack the 
valise, opening the drawers of the old- 
fashioned mahogany bureau with a little 
breath of pleasure. “Lavender! Hilary.” 

Hilary smiled, catching some of her sister’s 
enthusiasm. She leaned back among her 
cushions, her eyes on the stretch of shining 
water at the far end of the pasture. “I wish 
you were going to be here, Paul, so that we 
could go rowing. I wonder if I’ll ever feel 
as if I could row again, myself.” 

“Of course you will, and a great deal sooner 
than you think.” Pauline hung Hilary’s 
dressing-gown across the foot of the high 
double bed. “Now I think you’re all settled, 
ma’am, and I hope to your satisfaction. Isn’t 
it a veritable ‘chamber of peace,’ Hilary?” 

Through the open door and windows came 
the distant tinkle of a cow bell, and other farm 
sounds. There came, too, the scent of the 
early May pinks growing in the borders of 
Mrs. Boyd’s old-fashioned flower beds. Al- 
ready the peace and quiet of the house, the 
homely comfort, had done Hilary good; the 
thought of the long simple days to come, were 


86 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


not so depressing as they had seemed when 
thought of that morning. 

“Bless me, I’d forgotten, but I’ve a bit 
of news for you,” Mrs. Boyd said, coming in, 
a moment or so later; “the manor’s taken for 
the summer.” 

“Really?” Pauline cried, “why it’s been 
empty for ever and ever so long.” 

The manor was an old rambling stone 
house, standing a little back from a bit of 
sandy beach, that jutted out into the lake 
about a mile from The Maples. It was a 
pleasant place, with a tiny grove of its own, 
and good-sized garden, which, year after year, 
in spite of neglect, was bright with old- 
fashioned hardy annuals planted long ago, 
when the manor had been something more 
than an old neglected house, at the mercy of 
a chance tenant. 

“Just a father and daughter. They’ve got 
old Betsy Todd to look after them,” Mrs. 
Boyd went on. “The girl’s about your age, 
Hilary. You wasn’t looking to find company 
of that sort so near, was you?” 

Hilary looked interested. “No,” she an- 


THE MAPLES 37 

swered. “But, after all, the manor’s a mile 
away.” 

“Oh, she’s back and forth every day — for 
milk, or one thing or another; she’s terribly 
interested in the farm; father’s taken a great 
notion to her. She’ll be over after supper, 
you’ll see; and then I’ll make you acquainted 
with her.” 

“Are they city people?” Pauline asked. 

“From New York!” Mrs. Boyd told her 
proudly. From her air one would have sup- 
posed she had planned the whole affair ex- 
pressly for Hilary’s benefit. “Their name’s 
Dayre.” 

“What is the girl’s first name?” Pauline 
questioned. 

“Shirley; it’s a queer name for a girl, to 
my thinking.” 

“Is she pretty?” Pauline went on. 

“Not according to my notions; father says 
she is. She’s thin and dark, and I never did 
see such a mane of hair — and it ain’t always 
too tidy, neither — but she has got nice eyes and 
a nice friendly way of talking. Looks to me, 
like she hasn’t been brought up by a woman.” 


38 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“She sounds — interesting,” Pauline said, 
and when Mrs. Boyd had left them, to make 
a few changes in her supper arrangements, 
Pauline turned eagerly to Hilary. “You’re 
in luck, Hilary Shaw! The newest kind of 
new people; even if it isn’t a new place!” 

“How do you know they’ll, or rather, she’ll, 
want to know me?” Hilary asked, with one 
of those sudden changes of mood an invalid 
often shows, “or I her? We haven’t seen her 
yet. Paul, do you suppose Mrs. Boyd would 
mind letting me have supper in here?” 

“Oh, Hilary, she’s laid the table in the liv- 
ing-room! I heard her doing it. She’d be 
ever so disappointed.” 

“Well,”, Hilary said, “come on then.” 

Out in the living-room, they found Mr. 
Boyd waiting for them, and so heartily glad 
to see them, that Hilary’s momentary impa- 
tience vanished. To Pauline’s delight, she 
really brought quite an appetite to her supper. 

“You should’ve come out here long ago, 
Hilary,” Mr. Boyd told her, and he insisted 
on her having a second helping of the creamed 
toast, prepared especially in her honor. 


THE MAPLES 


39 


Before supper was over, Captain’s deep- 
toned bark proclaimed a newcomer, or new- 
comers, seeing that it was answered immedi- 
ately by a medley of shrill barks, in the midst 
of which a girl’s voice sounded authoritively 
— “Quiet, Phil! Pat, I’m ashamed of you! 
Pudgey, if you’re not good instantly, you shall 
stay at home to-morrow night!” 

A moment later, the owner of the voice 
appeared at the porch door. “May I come 
in, Mrs. Boyd?” she asked. 

“Come right in, Miss Shirley. I’ve a couple 
of young friends here, I want you should get 
acquainted with,” Mrs. Boyd cried. 

“You ain’t had your supper yet, have you, 
Miss Shirley?” Mr. Boyd asked. 

“Father and I had tea out on the lake,” 
Shirley answered, “but I’m hungry enough 
again by now, for a slice of Mrs. Boyd’s bread 
and butter.” 

And presently, she was seated at the table, 
chatting away with Paul and Hilary, as if 
they were old acquaintances, asking Mr. Boyd 
various questions about farm matters and an- 
swering Mrs. Boyd’s questions regarding 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


40 

Betsy Todd and her doings, with the most 
delightful air of good comradeship imagin- 
able. 

“Oh, me!” Pauline pushed back her chair 
regretfully, “I simply must go, it’ll be dark 
before I get home, as it is.” 

“I reckon it will, deary,” Mrs. Boyd 
agreed, “so I won’t urge you to stay longer. 
Father, you just whistle to Cohn to bring 
Fanny ’round.” 

Hilary followed her sister into the bed- 
room. “You’ll Be over soon, Paul?” 

Pauline, putting on her hat before the glass, 
turned quickly. “As soon as I can. Hilary, 
don’t you like her?” 

Hilary balanced herself on the arm of the 
big, old-fashioned rocker. “I think so. Any- 
way, I love to watch her talk; she talks all 
over her face.” 

They went out to the gig, where Mr. and 
Mrs. Boyd and Shirley were standing. 
Shirley was feeding Fanny with handfuls of 
fresh grass. “Isn’t she a fat old dear!” she 
said. 

“She’s a fat old poke!” Pauline returned. 


THE MAPLES 


41 


“Mayn’t I give you a lift? I can go ’round 
by the manor road ’s well as not.” 

Shirley accepted readily, settling herself in 
the gig, and balancing her pail of milk on her 
knee carefully. 

“Good-by,” Pauline called. “Mind, you’re 
to be ever and ever so much better, next time 
I cpme, Hilary.” 

“Your sister has been sick?” Shirley asked, 
her voice full of sympathetic interest. 

“Not sick — exactly; just run down and list- 
less.” 

Shirley leaned a little forward, drawing in 
long breaths of the clear evening air. “I don’t 
see how anyone can ever get run down — here, 
in this air; I’m hardly indoors at all. Father 
and I have our meals out on the porch. You 
ought to have seen Betsy Todd’s face, the first 
time I proposed it. ‘Ain’t the dining-room to 
your liking, miss?’ ” she asked. 

“Betsy Todd’s a queer old thing,” Pauline 
commented. “Father has the worst time, get- 
ting her to come to church.” 

“We were there last Sunday,” Shirley said. 
“I’m afraid we were rather late; it’s a pretty 


42 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


old church, isn’t it? I suppose you live in that 
square white house next to it?” 

“Yes,” Pauline answered. “Father came 
to Winton just after he was married, so we 
girls have never lived anywhere else nor been 
anywhere else — that counted. Any really big 
city, I mean. We’re dreadfully tired of Win- 
ton — Hilary, especially.” 

“It’s a mighty pretty place.” 

“I suppose so.” Pauline slapped old 
Fanny impatiently. “Will you go on!” 

Fanny was maldng forward most reluc- 
tantly; the Boyd barn had been very much 
to her liking. Now, as the three dogs made 
a swift rush at her leaping and barking around 
her, she gave a snort of disgust, quickening her 
pace involuntarily. 

“Don’t call them off, please!” Pauline 
begged Shirley. “She isn’t in the least scared, 
and it’s perfectly refreshing to find that she 
can move.” 

“All the same, discipline must be main- 
tained,” Shirley insisted; and at her command 
the dogs fell behind. 

“Have you been here long?” Pauline asked. 


THE MAPLES 


43 


“About two weeks. We were going further 
up the lake — just on a sketching trip, — and 
we saw this house from the deck of the boat; 
it looked so delightful, and so deserted and 
lonely, that we came back from the next land- 
ing to see about it. We took it at once and 
sent for a lot of traps from the studio at home, 
they aren’t here yet.” 

Pauline looked her interest. It seemed a 
very odd, attractive way of doing things, no 
long tiresome plannings of ways and means 
beforehand. Suppose — when Uncle Paul’s 
letter came — they could set off in such fashion, 
with no definite point in view, and stop wher- 
ever they felt like it. 

“I can’t think,” Shirley went on, “how 
such a charming old place came to be stand- 
ing idle.” 

“Isn’t it rather — run down?” 

“Not enough to matter — really. I want 
father to buy it, and do what is needed to it, 
without making it all new and snug looking. 
The sunsets from that front lawn are gorgeous, 
don’t you think so?” 

“Yes,” Pauline agreed, “I haven’t been 


44 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


over there in two years. We used to have 
picnics near there.” 

“I hope you will again, this summer, and 
invite father and me. We adore picnics; 
we’ve had several since we came — he and I and 
the dogs. The dogs do love picnics so, too.” 

Pauline had given up wanting to hurry 
Fanny; what a lot she would have to tell her 
mother when she got home. 

She was sorry when a turn in the road 
brought them within sight of the old manor 
house. “There’s father!” Shirley said, nod- 
ding to a figure coming towards them across 
a field. The dogs were off to meet him di- 
rectly, with shrill barks of pleasure. 

“May I get down here, please?” Shirley 
asked. “Thank you very much for the lift; 
and I am so glad to have met you and your 
sister. Miss Shaw. You’ll both come and see 
me soon, won’t you?” 

“We’d love to,” Pauline answered heartily; 
“ ’cross lots, it’s not so very far over here from 
the parsonage, and,” she hesitated, “you — 
you’ll be seeing Hilary quite often, while she’s 
at The Maples, perhaps?” 


THE MAPLES 


45 


“I hope so. Father’s on the lookout for a 
horse and rig for me, and then she and I can 
have some drives together. She will know 
where to find the prettiest roads.” 

“Oh, she would enjoy that,” Pauline said 
eagerly, and as she drove on, she turned more 
than once to glance back at the tall, slender 
figure crossing the field. Shirley seemed to 
walk as if the mere act of walking were in it- 
self a pleasure. Pauline thought she had 
never before known anyone who appeared so 
alive from head to foot. 

“Go ’long, Fanny!” she commanded; she 
was in a hurry to get home now, with her 
burden of news. It seemed to her as if she 
had been away a long while, so much had hap- 
pened in the meantime. 

At the parsonage gate, Pauline found Pa- 
tience waiting for her. “You have taken 
your time, Paul Shaw!” the child said, climb- 
ing in beside her sister. 

“Fanny’s time, you mean!” 

“It hasn’t come yet!” Patience said pro- 
testingly. “I went for the mail myself this af- 
ternoon, so I know!” 


46 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“Oh, well, perhaps it will to-morrow/’ 
Pauline answered, with so little of real concern 
in her voice, that Patience wondered. “Sup- 
pose you take Fanny on to the barn. Mother’s 
home, isn’t she?” 

Patience glanced at her sharply. “You’ve 
got something — particular — to tell mother ! 
O Paul, please wait ’til I come. Is it 
about — ” 

“You’re getting to look more like an inter- 
rogation point every day, Impatience!” Pau- 
line told her, getting down from the gig. 

Patience sniffed. “If nobody ever asked 
questions, nobody’d ever know anything!” she 
declared. 

“Is mother home?” Pauline asked again. 

“Who’s asking things now!” Patience drew 
the reins up tightly and bouncing up and down 
on the carriage seat, called sharply — “Hi yi! 
Hi yi!” 

It was the one method that never failed to 
rouse Fanny’s indignation, producing, for the 
moment, the desired effect; still, as Pauline 
said, it was hardly a proceeding that Hilary 
or she could adopt, or, least of all, their father. 


THE MAPLES 


47 


As she trotted briskly off to the barn now, 
the very tilt of Fanny’s ears expressed injured 
dignity. Dignity was Fanny’s strong point; 
that, and the ability to cover less ground in 
an afternoon than any other horse in Winton. 
The small human being at the other end of 
those taut reins might have known she would 
have needed no urging barnwards. 

“Maybe you don’t like it,” Patience ob- 
served, “but that makes no difference — ’s 
long’s it’s for your good. You’re a very un- 
christiany horse, Fanny Shaw. And I’ll ‘hi 

yi’ you every time I get a chance; so now go 

>> 

on. 

However Patience was indoors in time to 
hear all but the very beginning of Pauline’s 
story of her afternoon’s experience. “I told 
you,” she broke in, “that I saw a nice girl at 
church last Sunday — in Mrs. Dobson’s pew ; 
and Mrs. Dobson kept looking at her out of 
the corner of her eyes all the time, ’stead of 
paying attention to what father was saying; 
and Miranda says, ten to one, Sally Dobson 
comes out in — ” 

“That will do, Patience,” her mother said, 


48 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“if you are going to interrupt in this fashion, 
you must run away.” 

Patience subsided reluctantly, her blue 
eyes most expressive. 

“Isn’t it nice for Hilary, mother? Now 
she’ll be contented to stay a week or two, don’t 
you think?” Pauline said. 

“I hope so, dear. Yes, it is very nice.” 

“She was looking better already, mother; 
brighter, you know.” 

“Mummy, is asking a perfectly necessary 
question ‘interrupting’ ?” 

“Perhaps not, dear, if there is only one,” 
smiled Mrs. Shaw. 

“Mayn’t I, please, go with Paul and Hilary 
when they go to call on that girl?” 

“On whom, Patience?” 

Patience wriggled impatiently; grown peo- 
ple were certainly very trying at times. “On 
Paul’s and Hilary’s new friend, mummy.” 

“Not the first time, Patience; possibly 
later — ” 

Patience shrugged. “By and by,” she ob- 
served, addressing the room at large, “when 
Paul and Hilary are married, Fll be Miss 


THE MAPLES 


49 


Shaw! And then — ” the thought appeared to 
give her considerable comfort. 

“And maybe, Towser,” she confided later, 
as the two sat together on the side porch, 
“maybe — some day — you and I’ll go to call 
on them on our own account. I’m not sure 
it isn’t your duty to call on those dogs — you 
lived here first, and I can’t see why it isn’t 
mine — to call on that girl. Father says, we 
should always hasten to welcome the stranger ; 
and they sound dreadfully interesting.” 

Towser blinked a sleepy acquiescence. In 
spite of his years, he still followed blindly 
where Patience led, though the consequences 
were frequently disastrous. 

It was the next afternoon that Pauline, 
reading in the garden, heard an eager little 
voice calling excitedly, “Paul, where are you! 
It’s come! It’s come! I brought it up from 
the office myself!” 

Pauline sprang up. “Here I am, Patience ! 
Hurry!” 

“Well, I like that!” Patience said, coming 
across the lawn. “Hurry! Haven’t I run 
every inch of the way home !” She waved the 


50 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


letter above her head — “ ‘Miss Pauline A. 
Shaw!’ It’s type-written! O Paul, aren’t 
you going to read it out here !” 

For Pauline, catching the letter from her, 
had run into the house, crying — “Mother! O 
Mother Shaw!” 


CHAPTER III 


UNCLE PAUL’S ANSWER 


CHAPTER III 

uncle Paul’s answer 

“Mother! O mother, where are you!” 
Pauline cried, and on Mrs. Shaw’s answering 
from her own room, she ran on up-stairs. “O 
Mother Shaw! It’s come at last!” she an- 
nounced breathlessly. 

“So I thought — when I heard Patience call- 
ing just now. Pauline, dear, try not to be too 
disappointed if — ” 

“You open it, mother — please! Now it’s 
really come, I’m — afraid to.” Pauline held 
out her letter. 

“No, dear, it is addressed to you,” Mrs. 
Shaw answered quietly. 

And Pauline, a good deal sobered by the 
gravity with which her mother had received the 
news, sat down on the wide window seat, near 
her mother’s chair, tearing open the envelope. 
As she spread out the heavy businesslike sheet 


54 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


of paper within, a small folded enclosure fell 
from it into her lap. 

“Oh, mother!” Pauline caught up the 
narrow blue slip. She had never received a 
check from anyone before. “Mother! listen!” 
and she read aloud, “ ‘Pay to the order of 
Miss Pauline A. Shaw, the sum of twenty- 
five dollars.’ ” 

Twenty-five dollars! One ought to be able 
to do a good deal with twenty-five dollars ! 

“Goodness me!” Patience exclaimed. She 
had followed her sister up-stairs, after a dis- 
creet interval, curling herself up unobtrusively 
in a big chair just inside the doorway. “Can 
you do what you like with it, Paul?” 

But Pauline was bending over the letter, a 
bright spot of color on each cheek. Presently, 
she handed it to her mother. “I wish — I’d 
never written to him! Read it, mother!” 

And Mrs. Shaw read, as follows — 

New York City, May 31, 19 — . 
Miss Pauline A. Shaw , 

W inton, Vt. 

My Dear Niece: Yours of May 16th to 
hand. I am sorry to learn that your sister 


UNCLE PAUL’S ANSWER 55 


Hilary appears to be in such poor health at 
present. Such being the case, however, it 
would seem to me that home was the best 
place for her. I do not at all approve of this 
modern fashion of running about the country, 
on any and every pretext. Also, if I remem- 
ber correctly, your father has frequently de- 
scribed Winton to me as a place of great 
natural charms, and peculiarly adapted to 
those suffering from so-called nervous dis- 
orders. 

Altogether, I do not feel inclined to comply 
with your request to make it possible for your 
sister to leave home, in search of change 
and recreation. Instead, beginning with this 
letter, I will forward you each month during 
the summer, the sum of twenty-five dollars, to 
be used in procuring for your sisters and your- 
self — I understand, there is a third child — 
such simple and healthful diversions as your 
parents may approve, the only conditions I 
make, being, that at no time shall any of your 
pleasure trips take you further than ten miles 
from home, and that you keep me informed, 
from time to time, how this plan of mine is 
succeeding. 

Trusting this may prove satisfactory, 

Very respectfully, 

Paul A. Shaw. 


56 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“What do you think, mother?” Pauline 
asked, as Mrs. Shaw finished reading. “Isn’t 
it a very — queer sort of letter?” 

“It is an extremely characteristic one, dear.” 

“I think,” Patience could contain herself no 
longer, “that you are the inconsideratest per- 
sons! You know I’m perfectly wild to know 
what’s in that letter!” 

“Run away now, Patience,” her mother 
said. “You shall hear about it later,” and 
when Patience had obeyed — not very willingly, 
Mrs. Shaw turned again to Pauline. “We 
must show this to your father, before making 
any plans in regard to it, dear.” 

“He’s coming now. You show it to him, 
please, mother.” 

When her mother had gone down-stairs, 
Pauline still sat there in the window seat, look- 
ing soberly out across the lawn to the village 
street, with its double rows of tall, old trees. 
So her flag had served little purpose after all! 
That change for Hilary was still as uncertain, 
as much a vague part of the future, as it had 
ever been. 

It seemed to the girl, at the moment, as if 


UNCLE PAUL’S ANSWER 57 


she fairly hated Winton. As though Hilary 
and she did not already know every stick and 
stone in it, had not long ago exhausted all its 
possibilities! 

New people might think it “quaint” and 
“pretty” but they had not lived here all their 
lives. And, besides, she had expressly told 
Uncle Paul that the doctor had said that 
Hilary needed a change. 

She was still brooding over the downfall of 
her hopes, when her mother called to her from 
the garden. Pauline went down, feeling that 
it mattered very little what her father’s de- 
cision had been — it could make so little differ- 
ence to them, either way. 

Mrs. Shaw was on the bench under the old 
elm, that stood midway between parsonage 
and church. She had been rereading Uncle 
Paul’s letter, and to Pauline’s wonder, there 
was something like a smile of amusement in 
her eyes. 

“Well, mother?” the girl asked. 

“Well, dear, your father and I have talked 
the matter over, and we have decided to allow 
you to accept your uncle’s offer.” 


58 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“But that — hateful condition! How is 
Hilary to get a chance — here in Winton?” 

“Who was it that I heard saying, only this 
morning, Pauline, that even if Uncle Paul 
didn’t agree, she really believed we might 
manage to have a very pleasant summer here 
at home?” 

“I know — but still, now that we know 
definitely — ” 

“We can go to work definitely to do even 
better.” 

“But how, mother!” 

“That is what we must think over. Sup- 
pose you put your wits to work right now. I 
must go down to Jane’s for a few moments. 
After all, Pauline, those promised twenty-fives 
can be used very pleasantly — even in Winton.” 

“But it will still be Winton.” 

“Winton may develop some unexplored 
corners, some new outlooks.” 

Pauline looked rather doubtful; then, catch- 
ing sight of a small dejected-looking little fig- 
ure in the swing, under the big cherry-tree at 
the foot of the lawn, she asked, “I suppose I 
may tell Patience now, mother? She really 


UNCLE PAUL’S ANSWER 59 


has been very good all this time of waiting.” 

“She certainly has. Only, not too many de- 
tails, Pauline. Patience is of such a confiding 
disposition.” 

“Patience,” Pauline called, “suppose we go 
see if there aren’t some strawberries ripe?” 

Patience ran off for a basket. Straw- 
berries ! As if she didn’t know they were only 
a pretext. Grown people were assuredly 
very queer — but sometimes, it was necessary 
to humor their little whims and ways. 

“I don’t believe they are ripe yet,” she said, 
skipping along beside her sister. “O Paul, 
is it — nice?” 

“Mother thinks sol” 

“Don’t you?” 

“Maybe I will — after a while. Hilary isn’t 
to go away.” 

“Is that what you wrote and asked Uncle 
Paul? And didn’t you ask for us all to go?” 

“Certainly not — we’re not sick,” said Pau- 
line, laughing. 

“Miranda says what Hilary needs is a good 
herb tonic!” 

“Miranda doesn’t know everything.” 


60 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“What is Uncle Paul going to do then?” 

“Send some money every month — to have 
good times with at home.” 

“One of those blue paper things?” 

“I suppose so,” Pauline laughed. 

“And you don’t call that nice! Well of all 
the ungratefullest girls! Is it for us all to 
have good times with? Or just Hilary?” 

“All of us. Of course, Hilary must come 
first.” 

Patience fairly jumped up and down with 
excitement. “When will they begin, and 
what will they be like? O Paul, just think of 
the good times we’ve had without any money 
’t all ! Aren’t we the luckiest girls !” 

They had reached the strawberry-bed and 
Patience dropped down in the grass beside 
it, her hands clasped around her knees. 
“Good times in Winton will be a lot better 
than good times anywhere else. Winton’s 
such a nice sociable place.” 

Pauline settled herself on the top rail of 
the fence bordering the garden at the back. 
Patience’s enthusiasm was infectious. “What 
sort of good times do you mean?” she asked. 


UNCLE PAUL’S ANSWER 61 


“Picnics!” 

“We have such a lot of picnics — year after 
year !” 

“A nice picnic is always sort of new. 
Miranda does put up such beautiful lunches. 
O Paul, couldn’t we afford chocolate layer 
cake every time, now?” 

“You goosey!” Pauline laughed again 
heartily. 

“And maybe there’ll be an excursion some- 
where’s, and by’n’by there’ll be the town fair. 
Paul, there’s a ripe berry! And another 
and—” 

“See here, hold on, Impatience!” Pauline 
protested, as the berries disappeared, one after 
another, down Patience’s small throat. “Per- 
haps, if you stop eating them all, we can get 
enough for mother’s and father’s supper.” 

“Maybe they went and hurried to get ripe 
for to-night, so we could celebrate,” Patience 
suggested. “Paul, mayn’t I go with you next 
time you go over to The Maples?” 

“We’ll see what mother says.” 

“I hate ‘we’ll see’s’!” Patience declared, 
reaching so far over after a particularly 


62 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


tempting berry, that she lost her balance, and 
fell face down among them. 

“Oh, dear!” she sighed, as her sister came 
to her assistance, “something always seems 
to happen clean-apron afternoon! Paul, 
wouldn’t it be a ‘good time,’ if Miranda would 
agree not to scold ’bout perfectly unavoidable 
accidents once this whole summer?” 

“Who’s to do the deciding as to the un- 
avoidableness?” Pauline asked. “Come on, 
Patience, we’ve got about all the ripe ones, and 
it must be time for you to lay the supper- 
table.” 

“Not laying supper-tables would be another 
good time,” Patience answered. “We did get 
enough, didn’t we? I’ll hull them.” 

“I wonder,” Pauline said, more as if speak- 
ing to herself, “whether maybe mother wouldn’t 
think it good to have Jane in now and then — 
for extra work? Not supper-tables, young 
lady.” 

“ J ane would love it. She likes to work with 
Miranda — she says Miranda’s such a nice lady. 
Do you think she is, Paul?” 

“I’m thinking about other things just now.” 


UNCLE PAUL’S ANSWER 63 


“I don’t — There’s mother. Goodness, 
Miranda’s got the cloth on!” And away sped 
the child. 

To Patience’s astonishment, nothing was 
said at supper, either of Uncle Paul’s letter, 
or the wonderful things it was to lead to. Mr. 
Shaw kept his wife engaged with parish sub- 
jects and Pauline appeared lost in thoughts 
of her own. Patience fidgeted as openly as 
she dared. Of all queer grown-ups — and it 
looked as though most grown-ups were more or 
less queer — father was certainly the queerest. 
Of course, he knew about the letter; and how 
could he go on talking about stupid, uninter- 
esting matters — like the Ladies’ Aid and the 
new hymn books ? 

Even the first strawberries of the season 
passed unnoticed, as far as he was concerned, 
though Mrs. Shaw gave Patience a little smil- 
ing nod, in recognition of them. 

“Mother,” Pauline exclaimed, the moment 
her father had gone back to his study, “I’ve 
been thinking — Suppose we get Hilary to pre- 
tend — that coming home is coming to a new 
place? That she is coming to visit us? We’ll 


64 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


think up all the interesting things to do, that 
we can, and the pretty places to show her.” 

“That would be a good plan, Pauline.” 

“And if she’s company, she’ll have to have 
the spare room,” Patience added. 

“Jolly for you, Patience!” Pauline said. 
“Only, mother, Hilary doesn’t like the spare 
room; she says it’s the dreariest room in the 
house.” 

“If she’s company, she’ll have to pretend to 
like it, it wouldn’t be good manners not to,” 
Patience observed. The prospect opening 
out ahead of them seemed full of delightful 
possibilities. “I hope Miranda catches on to 
the game, and gives us pound-cake and hot 
biscuits for supper ever so often, and doesn’t 
call me to do things, when I’m busy entertain- 
ing ‘the company.’ ” 

“Mother,” Pauline broke in — “do keep 
quiet, Impatience — couldn’t we do the spare 
room over — there’s that twenty-five dollars? 
We’ve planned it so often.” 

“We might make some alterations, dear — 
at least.” 

“We’ll take stock the first thing to-morrow 


UNCLE PAUL’S ANSWER 65 


morning. I suppose we can’t really start in 
before Monday.” 

“Hardly, seeing that it is Friday night.” 

They were still talking this new idea over, 
though Patience had been sent to bed, when 
Mr. Shaw came in from a visit to a sick 
parishioner. “We’ve got the most beautiful 
scheme on hand, father,” Pauline told him, 
wheeling forward his favorite chair. She 
hoped he would sit down and talk things over 
with them, instead of going on to the study ; it 
wouldn’t be half as nice, if he stayed outside 
of everything. 

“New schemes appear to be rampant these 
days,” Mr. Shaw said, but he settled himself 
comfortably in the big chair, quite as though 
he meant to stay with them. “What is this 
particular one?” 

He listened, while Pauline explained, really 
listened, instead of merely seeming to. “It 
does appear an excellent idea,” he said; “but 
why should it be Hilary only, who is to try 
to see Winton with new eyes this summer? 
Suppose we were all to do so?” 

Pauline clapped her hands softly. “Then 


66 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


you’ll help us? And we’ll all pretend. May- 
be Uncle Paul’s thought isn’t such a bad one, 
after all.” 

“Paul always believed in developing the op- 
portunities nearest hand,” Mr. Shaw an- 
swered. He stroked the head Towser laid 
against his knee. “Your mother and I will be 
the gainers — if we keep all our girls at home, 
and still achieve the desired end.” 

Pauline glanced up quickly. How could 
she have thought him unheeding — indifferent? 

“Somehow, I think it will work out all right,” 
she said. “Anyhow, we’re going to try it, 
aren’t we, Mother Shaw? Patience thinks it 
the best idea ever, there’ll be no urging 
needed there.” 

Pauline went up to bed that night feel- 
ing strangely happy. For one thing the un- 
certainty was over, and if they set to work to 
make this summer full of interest, to break up 
the monotony and routine that Hilary found 
so irksome, the result must be satisfactory. 
And lastly, there was the comforting convic- 
tion, that whatever displeasure her father had 
felt at first, at her taking the law into her own 


UNCLE PAUL’S ANSWER 67 

hands in such unforeseen fashion, had disap- 
peared now; and he was not going to stay 
“outside of things,” that was sure. 

The next morning, as soon as breakfast was 
over, Pauline ran up-stairs to the spare room. 
She threw open the shutters of the four win- 
dows, letting in the fresh morning air. The 
side windows faced west, and looked out 
across the pleasant tree-shaded yard to the 
church; those at the front faced south, over- 
looking the broad village street. 

In the bright sunlight, the big square room 
stood forth in all its prim orderliness. “It is 
ugly,” Pauline decided, shaking her head dis- 
approvingly, but it had possibilities. No 
room, with four such generous windows and 
— for the fire-board must come out — such a 
wide deep fireplace, could be without them. 

She turned, as her mother came in, duly at- 
tended by Patience. “It is hideous, isn’t it, 
mother? The paper, I mean — and the carpet 
isn’t much better. It did very well, I suppose, 
for the visiting ministers — probably they’re 
too busy thinking over their sermons to notice 
— but for Hilary — ” 


68 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


Mrs. Shaw smiled. “Perhaps you are right, 
dear. As to the unattractiveness of the pa- 
per — 

“We must repaper — that’s sure; plain green, 
with a little touch of color in the border, and, 
oh, Mother Shaw, wouldn’t a green and white 
matting be lovely?” 

“And expensive, Pauline.” 

“It wouldn’t take all the twenty-five, I’m 
sure. Miranda’ll do the papering, I know. 
She did the study last year. Mother, couldn’t 
we have Jane in for the washing and ironing 
this week, and let Miranda get right at this 
room? I’ll help with the ironing, too.” 

“I suppose so, dear. Miranda is rather 
fussy about letting other people do her regu- 
lar work, you know.” 

“I’ll ask her.” 

“And remember, Pauline, each day is go- 
ing to bring new demands — don’t put all your 
eggs into one basket.” 

“I won’t. We needn’t spend anything on 
this room except for the paper and matting.” 

Half an hour later, Pauline was on her 
way down to the village store for samples of 


UNCLE PAUL’S ANSWER 69 


paper. She had already settled the matter 
with Miranda, over the wiping of the break- 
fast dishes. 

Miranda had lived with the Shaws ever since 
Pauline was a baby, and was a very impor- 
tant member of the family, both in her own and 
their opinion. She was tall and gaunt, and 
somewhat severe looking; however, in her 
case, looks were deceptive. It would never 
have occurred to Miranda that the Shaws’ in- 
terests were not her interests — she considered 
herself an important factor in the upbringing 
of the three young people. If she had a 
favorite, it was probably Hilary. 

“Hmn,” she said, when Pauline broached 
the subject of the spare room, “what put that 
notion in your head, I’d like to know! That 
paper ain’t got a tear in it !” 

So Pauline went further, telling her some- 
thing of Uncle Paul’s letter and how they 
hoped to carry his suggestion out. 

Miranda stood still, her hands in the dish 
water — “That’s your pa’s own brother, ain’t 
it?” 

Pauline nodded. “And Miranda — ” 


70 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“I reckon he ain’t much like the minister. 
Well, me an’ Sarah Jane ain’t the least bit 
alike — if we are sisters. I guess I can man- 
age ’bout the papering. But it does go 
’gainst me, having that sexton woman in. 
Still, I reckon you can’t be content, ’till we 
get started. Looking for the old gentleman 
up, later, he you?” 

“For whom?” Pauline asked. 

“Your pa’s brother. The minister’s get- 
ting on, and the other one’s considerable older, 
I understand.” 

“I don’t think he will be up,” Pauline an- 
swered; she hadn’t thought of that before. 
Suppose he should come! She wondered 
what he would be like. 

Half way down the street, Pauline was over- 
taken by her younger sister. “Are you go- 
ing to get the new things now, Paul?” she 
asked eagerly. 

“Of course not, just get some samples.” 

“There’s always such a lot of getting ready 
first,” Patience sighed. “Paul, mother says 
I may go with you to-morrow afternoon.” 

“All right,” Pauline agreed. “Only, you’ve 


UNCLE PAUL’S ANSWER 71 

got to promise not to ‘hi yi’ at Fanny all the 
way.” 

“I won’t — all the way.” 

‘ ‘And — Impatience ?” 

“Yes?” 

“You needn’t say what we want the new 
paper for, or anything about what we are plan- 
ning to do — in the store I mean.” 

“Mr. Ward would be mighty interested.” 

“I dare say.” 

“Miranda says you’re beginning to put on 
considerable airs, since you’ve been turning 
your hair up, Paul Shaw. When I put my 
hair up, I’m going on being just as nice and 
friendly with folks, as before, you’ll see.” 

Pauline laughed, which was not at all to 
Patience’s liking. “All the same, mind what 
I say,” she warned. 

“Can I help choose?” Patience asked, as 
they reached the store. 

“If you like.” Pauline went through to the 
little annex devoted to wall papers and car- 
petings. It was rather musty and dull in 
there, Patience thought ; she would have liked 
to make a slow round of the whole store, ex- 


72 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


changing greetings and various confidences 
with the other occupants. The store was a 
busy place on Saturday morning, and Pa- 
tience knew every man, woman and child in 
Winton. 

They had got their samples and Pauline was 
lingering before a new line of summer dress- 
goods just received, when the young fellow in 
charge of the post-office and telegraph station 
called to her: “I say, Miss Shaw, here’s a mes- 
sage just come for you.” 

“For me — ” Pauline took it wonderingly. 
Her hands were trembling, she had never re- 
ceived a telegram before — Was Hilary? Then 
she laughed at herself. To have sent a mes- 
sage, Mr. Boyd would have first been obliged 
to come in to Winton. 

Out on the sidewalk, she tore open the en- 
velope, not heeding Patience’s curious de- 
mands. It was from her uncle, and read — 

“Have some one meet the afternoon train 
Saturday, am sending you an aid towards your 
summer’s outings.” 

“Oh,” Pauline said, “do hurry, Patience. I 
want to get home as fast as I can.” 


CHAPTER IV 


BEGINNINGS 













i 








* 






































CHAPTER IV 


BEGINNINGS 

Sunday afternoon, Pauline and Patience 
drove over to The Maples to see Hilary. 
They stopped, as they went by, at the post- 
office for Pauline to mail a letter to her uncle, 
which was something in the nature of a very 
enthusiastic postscript to the one she had writ- 
ten him Friday night, acknowledging and 
thanking him for his cheque, and telling him 
of the plans already under discussion. 

“And now,” Patience said, as they turned 
out of the wide main street, “we’re really off. 
I reckon Hilary’ll be looking for us, don’t 
you?” 

“I presume she will,” Pauline answered. 

“Maybe she’ll want to come back with us.” 

“Oh, I don’t believe so. She knows mother 
wants her to stay the week out. Listen, 
Patty — ” 


76 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


Patience sat up and took notice. When 
people Pattied her, it generally meant they 
had a favor to ask, or something of the sort. 

“Remember, you’re to be very careful not to 
let Hilary suspect — anything.” 

“About the room and — ?” 

“I mean — everything.” 

“Won’t she like it — all, when she does 
know?” 

“Well, rather!” 

Patience wriggled excitedly. “It’s like hav- 
ing a fairy godmother, isn’t it? And three 
wishes? If you’d had three wishes, Paul, 
wouldn’t you’ve chosen — ” 

“You’d better begin quieting down, Pa- 
tience, or Hilary can’t help suspecting some- 
thing.” 

Patience drew a long breath. “If she knew 
— she wouldn’t stay a single day longer, would 
she?” 

“That’s one reason why she mustn’t know.” 

“When will you tell her; or is mother go- 
ing to?” 

“I don’t know yet. See here, Patience, 
you may drive — if you won’t hi yi.” 


BEGINNINGS 


77 


“Please, Paul, let me, when we get to the 
avenue. It’s stupid coming to a place, like 
Fanny’d gone to sleep.” 

“Not before — and only once then,” Pauline 
stipulated, and Patience possessed her soul in 
at least a faint semblance of patience until 
they turned into the avenue of maples. Then 
she suddenly tightened her hold on the reins, 
bounced excitedly up and down, crying 
sharply — “Hi yi!” 

Fanny instantly pricked up her ears, and, 
what was more to the purpose, actually started 
into what might almost have been called a trot. 
“There! you see!” Patience said proudly, as 
they turned into the yard. 

Hilary came down the porch steps. “I 
heard Impatience urging her Rosinante on,” 
she laughed. “Why didn’t you let her drive 
all the way, Paul? I’ve been watching for 
you since dinner.” 

“We’ve been pretty nearly since dinner get- 
ting here, it seems to me,” Patience declared. 
“We had to wait for Paul to write a letter first 
to—” 

“Are you alone?” Pauline broke in hur- 


78 THE S. W. F. CLUB 

riedly, asking the first question that came into 
her mind. 

Hilary smiled ruefully. “Not exactly. 
Mr. Boyd’s asleep in the sitting-room, and 
Mrs. Boyd’s taking a nap up-stairs in her own 
room.” 

“You poor child!” Pauline said. “Jump 
out, Patience!” 

“Have you brought me something to read? 
I’ve finished both the books I brought with 
me, and gone through a lot of magazines — 
queer old things, that Mrs. Boyd took years 
and years ago.” 

“Then you’ve done very wrong,” Pauline 
told her severely, leading Fanny over to a 
shady spot at one side of the yard and tying 
her to the fence — a quite unnecessary act, as 
nothing would have induced Fanny to take her 
departure unsolicited. 

“Guess!” Pauline came back, carrying a 
small paper-covered parcel. “Father sent it 
to you. He was over at Vergennes yester- 
day.” 

“Oh!” Hilary cried, taking it eagerly and 
sitting down on the steps. “It’s a book, of 


BEGINNINGS 


79 


course.” Even more than her sisters, she had 
inherited her father’s love of books, and a new 
book was an event at the parsonage. “Oh,” 
she cried again, taking off the paper and dis- 
closing the pretty tartan cover within, “O 
Paul! It’s ‘Penelope’s Progress.’ Don’t you 
remember those bits we read in those odd 
magazines Josie lent us? And how we 
wanted to read it all?” 

Pauline nodded. “I reckon mother told fa- 
ther about it; I saw her following him out to 
the gig yesterday morning.” 

They went around to the little porch leading 
from Hilary’s room, always a pleasant spot in 
the afternoons. 

“Why,” Patience exclaimed, “it’s like an 
out-door parlor, isn’t it?” 

There was a big braided mat on the floor 
of the porch, its colors rather faded by time 
and use, but looking none the worse for that, 
a couple of rockers, a low stool, and a small 
table, covered with a bit of bright cretonne. 
On it stood a blue and white pitcher filled with 
field flowers, beside it lay one or two maga- 
zines. Just outside, extending from one of the 


80 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


porch posts to the limb of an old cherry tree, 
hung Hilary’s hammock, gay with cushions. 

“Shirley did it yesterday afternoon,” 
Hilary explained. “She was over here a good 
while. Mrs. Boyd let us have the things and 
the chintz for the cushions, Shirley made them, 
and we filled them with hay.” 

Pauline, sitting on the edge of the low 
porch, looked about her with appreciative eyes. 
“How pleasant and cozy it is, and after all, it 
only took a little time and trouble.” 

Hilary laid her new book on the table. 
“How soon do you suppose we can go over to 
the manor, Paul? I imagine the Dayres have 
fixed it up mighty pretty. Mr. Dayre was 
over here, last night. He and Shirley are ever 
so — chummy. He’s Shirley Putnam Dayre, 
and she’s Shirley Putnam Dayre, Junior. So 
he calls her ‘Junior’ and she calls him ‘Senior.’ 
They’re just like brother and sister. He’s an 
artist, they’ve been everywhere together. 
And, Paul, they think Winton is ‘delightful. 
Mr. Dayre says the village street, with its great 
overhanging trees, and old-fashioned houses, 
is a picture in itself, particularly up at our 


BEGINNINGS 


81 


end, with the church, all ivy-covered. He 
means to paint the church sometime this sum- 
mer.” 

“It would make a pretty picture,” Pauline 
said thoughtfully. “Hilary, I wonder — ” 

“So do I,” Hilary said. “Still, after all, 
one would like to see different places — ” 

“And love only one,” Pauline added; she 
turned to her sister. “You are better, aren’t 
you — already?” 

“I surely am. Shirley’s promised to take 
me out on the lake soon. She’s going to be 
friends with us, Paul — really friends. She 
says we must call her ‘Shirley,’ that she doesn’t 
like ‘Miss Dayre,’ she hears it so seldom.” 

“I think it’s nice — being called ‘Miss,’ ” Pa- 
tience remarked, from where she had curled 
herself up in the hammock. “I suppose she 
doesn’t want it, because she can have it — I’d 
love to be called ‘Miss Shaw.’ ” 

“Hilary,” Pauline said, “would you mind 
very much, if you couldn’t go away this sum- 
mer?” 

“It wouldn’t do much good if I did, would 
it?” 


82 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“The not minding would — to mother and 
the rest of us — ” 

“And if you knew what — ” Patience began 
excitedly. 

“Don’t you want to go find Captain, Impa- 
tience?” Pauline asked hastily, and Patience, 
feeling that she had made a false move, went 
with most unusual meekness. 

“Know what?” Hilary asked. 

“I — shouldn’t wonder, if the child had some 
sort of scheme on hand,” Pauline said, she 
hoped she wasn’t — prevaricating; after all, 
Patience probably did have some scheme in 
her head — she usually had. 

“I haven’t thought much about going away 
the last day or so,” Hilary said. “I suppose 
it’s the feeling better, and, then, the getting to 
know Shirley.” 

“I’m glad of that.” Pauline sat silent for 
some moments ; she was watching a fat bumble 
bee buzzing in and out among the flowers in 
the garden. It was always still, over here at 
the farm, but to-day, it seemed a different sort 
of stillness, as if bees and birds and flowers 
knew that it was Sunday afternoon. 


BEGINNINGS 


“Paul,” Hilary asked suddenly, “what are 
you smiling to yourself about?” 

“Was I smiling? I didn’t know it. I guess 
because it is so nice and peaceful here and be- 
cause — Hilary, let’s start a club — the ‘S. W. 
F. Club.’” 

“The what?” 

“The ‘S. W. F. Club.’ No, I shan’t tell 
you what the letters stand for! You’ve got to 
think it out for yourself.” 

“A real club, Paul?” 

“Indeed, yes.” 

“Who’s to belong?” 

“Oh, lots of folks. Josie and Tom, and you 
and I — and I think, maybe, mother and fa- 
ther.” 

“Father! To belong to a club!” 

“It was he who put the idea into my head.” 

Hilary came to sit beside her sister on the 
step. “Paul, I’ve a feeling that there is some- 
thing — up! And it isn’t the barometer!” 

“Where did you get it?” 

“From you.” 

Pauline sprang up. “Feelings are very un- 
reliable things to go by, but I’ve one just now 


84 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


— that if we don’t hunt Impatience up pretty 
quick — there will be something doing.” 

They found Patience sitting on the barn 
floor, utterly regardless of her white frock. A 
whole family of kittens were about her. 

“Aren’t they dears!” Patience demanded. 

“Mrs. Boyd says I may have my choice, to 
take home with me,” Hilary said. The par- 
sonage cat had died the fall before, and had 
had no successor as yet. 

Patience held up a small coal-black one. 
“Choose this, Hilary! Miranda says a black 
cat brings luck, though it don’t look like we 
needed any black cats to bring — ” 

“I like the black and white one,” Pauline 
interposed, just touching Patience with the 
tip of her shoe. 

“Maybe Mrs. Boyd would give us each one, 
that would leave one for her,” Patience sug- 
gested cheerfully. 

“I imagine mother would have something 
to say to that,” Pauline told her. “Was Josie 
over yesterday, Hilary?” 

Hilary nodded. “In the morning.” 

As they were going back to the house, they 


BEGINNINGS 


85 


met Mr. Boyd, on his way to pay his regular 
weekly visit to the far pasture. 

“Going to salt the colts?” Patience asked. 
“Please, mayn’t I come?” 

“There won’t be time, Patience,” Pauline 
said. 

“Not time!” Mr. Boyd objected, “I’ll be 
back to supper, and you girls are going to stay 
to supper.” He carried Patience off with 
him, declaring that he wasn’t sure he should 
let her go home at all, he meant to keep her 
altogether some day, and why not to-night? 

“Oh, I couldn’t stay to-night,” the child as- 
sured him earnestly. “Of course, I couldn’t 
ever stay for always, but by’n’by, when — 
there isn’t so much going on at home — there’s 
such a lot of things keep happening at home 
now, only don’t tell Hilary, please — maybe, 
I could come make you a truly visit.” 

Indoors, Pauline and Hilary found Mrs. 
Boyd down-stairs again from her nap. “You 
ain’t come after Hilary?” she questioned 
anxiously. 

“Only to see her,” Pauline answered, and 
while she helped Mrs. Boyd get supper, she 


86 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


confided to her the story of Uncle Paul’s let- 
ter and the plans already under way. 

Mrs. Boyd was much interested. “Bless 
me, it’ll do her a heap of good, you’ll see, my 
dear. I’m not sure, I don’t agree with your 
uncle, when all’s said and done, home’s the best 
place for young folks.” 

Just before Pauline and Patience went 
home that evening, Mrs. Boyd beckoned Pau- 
line mysteriously into the best parlor. “I al- 
ways meant her to have them some day — she 
being my god-child — and maybe they’ll do her 
as much good now, as any time, she’ll want to 
fix up a bit now and then, most likely. 
Shirley had on a string of them last night, but 
not to compare with these,” Mrs. Boyd was 
kneeling before a trunk in the parlor closet, 
and presently she put a little square shell box 
into Pauline’s hands. “Box and all, just like 
they came to me — you know, they were my 
grandmother’s — but Hilary’s a real careful 
sort of girl.” 

“But, Mrs. Boyd — I’m not sure that mother 
would — ” Pauline knew quite well what was 
in the box. 


BEGINNINGS 


87 


“That’s all right! You just slip them in 
Hilary’s top drawer, where she’ll come across 
them without expecting it. Deary me, I 
never wear them, and as I say, I’ve always 
meant to give them to her some day.” 

“She’ll be perfectly delighted — and they’ll 
look so pretty. Hilary’s got a mighty pretty 
neck, I think.” Pauline went out to the gig, 
the little box hidden carefully in her blouse, 
feeling that Patience was right and that these 
were very fairy-story sort of days. 

“You’ll be over again soon, won’t you?” 
Hilary urged. 

“We’re going to be tre-men-dous-ly busy,” 
Patience began, but her sister cut her short. 

“As soon as I can, Hilary. Mind you go 
on getting better.” 

By Monday noon, the spare room had lost 
its look of prim order. In the afternoon, 
Pauline and her mother went down to the store 
to buy the matting. There was not much 
choice to be had, and the only green and white 
there was, was considerably beyond the limit 
they had allowed themselves. 


88 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“Never mind,” Pauline said cheerfully, 
“plain white will look ever so cool and pretty 
— perhaps, the green would fade. I’m going 
to believe so.” 

Over a low wicker sewing-chair, she did 
linger longingly; it would look so nice beside 
one of the west windows. She meant to place 
a low table for books and work between those 
side windows. In the end, prudence won the 
day, and surely, the new paper and matting 
were enough to be grateful for in themselves. 

By the next afternoon the paper was on 
and the matting down. Pauline was up 
garret rummaging, when she heard someone 
calling her from the foot of the stairs. “I’m 
here, Josie,” she called back, and her friend 
came running up. 

“What are you doing?” she asked. 

Pauline held up an armful of old-fashioned 
chintz. 

“Oh, how pretty!” Josie exclaimed. “It 
makes one think of high-waisted dresses, and 
minuets and things like that.” 

Pauline laughed. “They were my great- 
grandmother’s bed curtains.” 


BEGINNINGS 89 

“Goodness! What are you going to do 
with them?” 

“I’m not sure mother will let me do any- 
thing. I came across them just now in look- 
ing for some green silk she said I might have 
to cover Hilary’s pin-cushion with.” 

“For the new room? Patience has been do- 
ing the honors of the new paper and matting 
— it’s going to be lovely, I think.” 

Pauline scrambled to her feet, shaking out 
the chintz: “If only mother would — it’s pink 
and green — let’s go ask her.” 

“What do you want to do with it, Pauline?” 
Mrs. Shaw asked. 

“I haven’t thought that far — use it for 
draperies of some kind, I suppose,” the girl 
answered. 

They were standing in the middle of the big, 
empty room. Suddenly, Josie gave a quick 
exclamation, pointing to the bare corner be- 
tween the front and side windows. “Wouldn’t 
a cozy corner be delightful — with cover and 
cushions of the chintz?” 

“May we, mother?” Pauline begged in a 
coaxing tone. 


90 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“I suppose so, dear — only where is the bench 
part to come from?” 

“Tom’ll make the frame for it, I’ll go get 
him this minute,” Josie answered. 

“And you might use that single mattress 
from up garret,” Mrs. Shaw suggested. 

Pauline ran up to inspect it, and to see what 
other treasures might be forthcoming. The 
garret was a big, shadowy place, extending 
over the whole house, and was lumber room, 
play place and general refuge, all in one. 

Presently, from under the eaves, she drew 
forward a little old-fashioned sewing-chair, 
discarded on the giving out of its cane seat. 
“But I could tack a piece of burlap on and 
cover it with a cushion,” Pauline decided, and 
bore it down in triumph to the new room, 
where Tom Brice was already making his 
measurements for the cozy corner. 

Josie was on the floor, measuring for the 
cover. “Isn’t it fun, Paul? Tom says it 
won’t take long to do his part.” 

Tom straightened himself, slipping his rule 
into his pocket. “I don’t see what you want 
it for, though,” he said. 


BEGINNINGS 


91 


“ ‘Yours not to reason why — * ” Pauline 
told him. “We see, and so will Hilary. 
Don’t you and Josie want to join the new 
club— the ‘S. W. F. Club’?” 

“Society of Willing Females, I suppose?” 
Tom remarked. 

“It sounds like some sort of sewing circle,” 
Josie said. 

Pauline sat down in one of the wide win- 
dow places. “I’m not sure it might not take 
in both. It is — ‘The Seeing Winton First 
Club.’ ” 

Josie looked as though she didn’t quite un- 
derstand, but Tom whistled softly. “What 
else have you been doing for the past fifteen 
years, if you please, ma’am?” he asked quiz- 
zically. 

Pauline laughed. “One ought to know a 
place rather thoroughly in fifteen years, I 
suppose; but — I’m hoping we can make it 
seem at least a little bit new and different this 
summer — for Hilary. You see, we shan’t be 
able to send her away, and so, I thought, per- 
haps, if we tried looking at Winton — with 
new eyes — ” 


92 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“I see,” Josie cried. “I think it’s a splen- 
diferous idea!” 

“And, I thought, if we formed a sort of 
club among ourselves and worked together — ” 

“Listen,” Josie interrupted again, “we’ll 
make it a condition of membership, that each 
one must, in turn, think up something pleasant 
to do.” 

“Is the membership to be limited?” Tom 
asked. 

Pauline smiled. “It will be so — necessarily 
— won’t it?” For Winton was not rich in 
young people. 

“There will be enough of us,” Josie declared 
hopefully. 

“Like the model dinner party?” her brother 
asked. “Not less than the Graces, nor more 
than the Muses.” 

And so the new club was formed then and 
there. There were to be no regular and formal 
meetings, no dues, nor fines, and each mem- 
ber was to consider himself, or herself, an ac- 
tive member of the programme committee. 

Tom, as the oldest member of their imme- 
diate circle of friends, was chosen president 


BEGINNINGS 


93 


before that first meeting adjourned; no other 
officers were considered necessary at the time. 
And being president, to him was promptly del- 
egated the honor — despite his vigorous pro- 
tests — of arranging for their first outing and 
notifying the other members — yet to be. 

“But,” he expostulated, “what’s a fellow to 
think up — in a hole like this?” 

“Winton isn’t a hole!” his sister protested. 
It was one of the chief occupations of Josie’s 
life at present, to contradict all such heretical 
utterances on Tom’s part. He was to go 
away that fall to commence his studies for 
the medical profession, for it was Dr. Brice’s 
great desire that, later, his son should assist 
him in his practice. But, so far, Tom though 
wanting to follow his father’s profession, was 
firm in his determination, not to follow it in 
Winton. 

“And remember,” Pauline said, as the three 
went down-stairs together, “that it’s the first 
step that counts — and to think up something 
very delightful, Tom.” 

“It mustn’t be a picnic, I suppose? 
Hilary won’t be up to picnics yet awhile.” 


94 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“N-no, and we want to begin soon. She’ll 
be back Friday, I think,” Pauline answered. 

By Wednesday night the spare room was 
ready for the expected guest. “It’s as if 
someone had waved a fairy wand over it, isn’t 
it?” Patience said delightedly. “Hilary’ll 
be so surprised.” 

“I think she will and — pleased.” Pauline 
gave one of the cushions in the cozy corner 
a straightening touch, and drew the window 
shades — Miranda had taken them down and 
turned them — a little lower. 

“It’s a regular company room, isn’t it?” 
Patience said joyously. 

The minister drove over to The Maples 
himself on Friday afternoon to bring Hilary 
home. 

“Remember,” Patience pointed a warning 
forefinger at him, just as he was starting, 
“not a single solitary hint!” 

“Not a single solitary one,” he promised. 

As he turned out of the gate, Patience drew 
a long breath. “Well, he’s off at last! But, 
oh, dear, however can we wait ’til he gets 
back?” 


CHAPTER V 


BEDELIA 





















CHAPTER V 


BEDELIA 

It was five o’clock that afternoon when Pa- 
tience, perched, a little white-clad sentry, on 
the gate-post, announced joyously — “They’re 
coming! They’re coming!” 

Patience was as excited as if the expected 
“guest” were one in fact, as well as name. It 
was fun to be playing a game of make-believe, 
in which the elders took part. 

As the gig drew up before the steps, Hilary 
looked eagerly out. “Will you tell me,” she 
demanded, “why father insisted on coming 
’round the lower road, by the depot — he didn’t 
stop, and he didn’t get any parcel? And 
when I asked him, he just laughed and looked 
mysterious.” 

“He went,” Pauline answered, “because we 
asked him to — company usually comes by train 
— real out-of-town company, you know.” 


98 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“Like visiting ministers and returned mis- 
sionaries, Patience explained. 

Hilary looked thoroughly bewildered. 
“But are you expecting company? You 
must be,” she glanced from one to another, 
“you’re all dressed up.” 

“We were expecting some, dear,” her 
mother told her, “but she has arrived.” 

“Don’t you see? You’re it!” Patience 
danced excitedly about her sister. 

“I’m the company!” Hilary said wonder- 
ingly. Then her eyes lighted up. “I under- 
stand! How perfectly dear of you all.” 

Mrs. Shaw patted the hand Hilary slipped 
into hers. “You have come back a good deal 
better than you went, my dear. The change 
has done you good.” 

“And it didn’t turn out a stupid — half-way 
affair, after all,” Hilary declared. “I’ve 
had a lovely time. Only, I simply had to 
come home, I felt somehow — that — that — ” 

“We were expecting company?” Pauline 
laughed. “And you wanted to be here?” 

“I reckon that was it,” Hilary agreed. As 
she sat there, resting a moment, before going 


BEDELIA 


99 


up-stairs, she hardly seemed the same girl 
who had gone away so reluctantly only eight 
days before. The change of scene, the out- 
door life, the new friendship, bringing with it 
new interests, had worked wonders. 

“And now,” Pauline suggested, taking up 
her sister’s valise, “perhaps you would like to 
go up to your room — visitors generally do.” 

“To rest after your journey, you know,” 
Patience prompted. Patience believed in 
playing one’s part down to the minutest de- 
tail. 

“Thank you,” Hilary answered, with quite 
the proper note of formality in her voice, “if 
you don’t mind ; though I did not find the trip 
as fatiguing as I had expected.” 

But from the door, she turned back to give 
her mother a second and most uncompany- 
like hug. “It is good to be home, Mother 
Shaw! And please, you don’t want to pack 
me off again anywhere right away — at least, 
all by myself?” 

“Not right away,” her mother answered, 
kissing her. 

“I guess you will think it is good to be 


100 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


home, when you know — everything,” Patience 
announced, accompanying her sisters up-stairs, 
but on the outside of the banisters. 

“Patty!” Pauline protested laughingly — 
“Was there ever such a child for letting things 
out!” 

“I haven’t!” the child exclaimed, “only now 
— it can’t make any difference.” 

“There is mystery in the very air!” Hilary 
insisted. “Oh, what have you all been up to?” 

“You’re not to go in there!” Patience cried, 
as Hilary stopped before the door of her own 
and Pauline’s room. 

“Of course you’re not,” Pauline told her. 
“It strikes me, for company — you’re making 
yourself very much at home! Walking into 
peoples’ rooms.” She led the way along the 
hall to the spare room, throwing the door wide 
open. 

“Oh!” Hilary cried, then stood quite still on 
the threshold, looking about her with wide, 
wondering eyes. 

The spare room was grim and gray no 
longer. Hilary felt as if she must be in some 
strange, delightful dream. The cool green of 


BEDELIA 


101 


the wall paper, with the soft touch of pink in 
ceiling and border, the fresh white matting, 
the cozy corner opposite — with its delicate old- 
fashioned chintz drapery and big cushions, the 
new toilet covers — white over green, the fresh 
curtains at the windows, the cushioned win- 
dow seats, the low table and sewing-chair, 
even her own narrow white bed, with its new 
ruffled spread, all went to make a room as 
strange to her, as it was charming and unex- 
pected. 

“Oh,” she said again, turning to her mother, 
who had followed them up -stairs, and stood 
waiting just outside the door. “How per- 
fectly lovely it all is — but it isn’t for me?” 

“Of course it is,” Patience said. “Aren’t 
you company — you aren’t just Hilary now, 
you’re ‘Miss Shaw’ and you’re here on a visit ; 
and there’s company asked to supper to-mor- 
row night, and it’s going to be such fun!” 

Hilary’s color came and went. It was 
something deeper and better than fun. She 
understood now why they had done this — why 
Pauline had said that — about her not going 
away; there was a sudden lump in the girl’s 


102 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


throat — she was glad, so glad, she had said that 
down-stairs — about not wanting to go away. 

And when her mother and Patience had 
gone down-stairs again and Pauline had be- 
gun to unpack the valise, as she had unpacked 
it a week ago at The Maples, Plilary sat in 
the low chair by one of the west windows, her 
hands folded in her lap, looking about this 
new room of hers. 

‘‘There,” Pauline said presently, “I believe 
that’s all now — you’d better lie down, Hilary 
— I’m afraid you’re tired.” 

“No, I’m not; at any rate, not very. I’ll lie 
down if you like, only I know I shan’t be able 
to sleep.” 

Pauline lowered the pillow and threw a 
light cover over her. “There’s something in 
the top drawer of the dresser,” she said, “but 
you’re not to look at it until you’ve lain down 
at least half an hour.” 

“I feel as if I were in an enchanted palace,” 
Hilary said, “with so many delightful sur- 
prises being sprung on me all the while.” 
After Pauline had gone, she lay watching the 
slight swaying of the wild roses in the tall jar 


BEDELIA 


103 


on the hearth. The wild roses ran rampant 
in the little lane leading from the back of the 
church down past the old cottage where Sex- 
toness Jane lived. Jane had brought these 
with her that morning, as her contribution to 
the new room. 

To Hilary, as to Patience, it seemed as if 
a magic wand had been waved, transforming 
the old dull room into a place for a girl to 
live and dream in. But for her, the name of 
the wand was Love. 

There must be no more impatient longings, 
no fretful repinings, she told herself now. 
She must not be slow to play her part in this 
new game that had been originated all for 
her. 

The half-hour up, she slipped from the bed 
and began unbuttoning her blue-print frock. 
Being company, it stood to reason she must 
dress for supper. But first, she must find 
out what was in the upper drawer. 

The first glimpse of the little shell box, told 
her that. There were tears in Hilary’s gray 
eyes, as she stood slipping the gold beads 
slowly through her fingers. How good every- 


104 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


one was to her; for the first time some under- 
standing of the bright side even of sickness — 
and she had not been really sick, only run- 
down — and, yes, she had been cross and hor- 
rid, lots of times — came to her. 

“I’ll go over just as soon as I can and thank 
her,” the girl thought, clasping the beads about 
her neck, “and I’ll keep them always and al- 
ways.” 

A little later, she came down-stairs all in 
white, a spray of the pink and white wild 
roses in her belt, her soft, fair hair freshly 
brushed and braided. She had been rather 
neglectful of her hair lately. 

There was no one on the front piazza but 
her father, and he looked up from his book 
with a smile of pleasure. “My dear, how 
well you are looking! It is certainly good to 
see you at home again, and quite your old 
self.” 

Hilary came to sit on the arm of his chair. 
“It is good to be at home again. I suppose 
you know all the wonderful surprises I found 
waiting me?” 

“Supper’s ready,” Patience proclaimed 


BEDELIA 


105 


from the doorway. “Please come, because — ” 
she caught herself up, putting a hand into 
Hilary’s, “I’ll show you where to sit, Miss 
Shaw.” 

Hilary laughed. “How old are you, my 
dear?” she asked, in the tone frequently used 
by visiting ministers. 

“I’m a good deal older than I’m treated 
generally,” Patience answered. “Do you 
like Winton?” 

“I am sure I shall like it very much.” 
Hilary slipped into the chair Patience drew 
forward politely. “The company side of the 
table — sure enough,” she laughed. 

“It isn’t proper to say things to yourself 
sort of low down in your voice,” Patience re- 
proved her, then at a warning glance from her 
mother subsided into silence as the minister 
took his place. 

For to-night, at least, Miranda had amply 
fulfilled Patience’s hopes, as to company sup- 
pers. And she, too, played her part in the 
new game, calling Hilary “Miss,” and never 
by any chance intimating that she had seen 
her before. 


106 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“Did you go over to the manor to see 
Shirley?” Patience asked. 

Hilary shook her head. “I promised her 
Pauline and I would he over soon. We may 
have Fanny some afternoon, mayn’t we, fa- 
ther?” 

Patience’s blue eyes danced. “They can’t 
have Fanny, can they, father?” she nodded at 
him knowingly. 

Hilary eyed her questioningly. “What is 
the matter, Patience?” 

“Nothing is the matter with her,” Pauline 
said hurriedly. “Don’t pay any attention to 
her.” 

“Only, if you would hurry,” Patience im- 
plored. “I — I can’t wait much longer!” 

“Wait!” Hilary asked. “For what?” 

Patience pushed back her chair. “For — 
Well, if you just knew what for, Hilary 
Shaw, you’d do some pretty tall hustling!” 

“Patience!” her father said reprovingly. 

“May I be excused, mother?” Patience 
asked. “I’ll wait out on the porch.” 

And Mrs. Shaw replied most willingly that 
she might. 


BEDELIA 


107 


“Is there anything more — to see, I mean, 
not to eat?” Hilary asked. “I don’t see how 
there can be.” 

“Are you through?” Pauline answered. 
“Because, if you are. I’ll show you.” 

“It was sent to Paul,” Patience called, from 
the hall door. “But she says, of course, it was 
meant for us all; and I think, myself, she’s 
right about that.” 

“Is it — alive?” Hilary asked. 

“ ‘It’ was — before supper,” Pauline told 
her. “I certainly hope nothing has happened 
to — ‘it’ since then.” 

“A dog?” Hilary suggested. 

“Wait and see; by the way, where’s that 
kitten?” 

“She’s to follow in a few days; she was a 
bit too young to leave home just yet.” 

“I’ve got the sugar!” Patience called. 

Hilary stopped short at the foot of the 
porch steps. Patience’s remark, if it had not 
absolutely let the cat out of the bag, had at 
least opened the bag. “Paul, it can’t be — ” 

“In the Shaw’s dictionary, at present, there 
doesn’t appear to be any such word as can’t,” 


108 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


Pauline declared. “Come on — after all, you 
know, the only way to find out — is to find 
out.” 

Patience had danced on ahead down the 
path to the barn. She stood waiting for 
them now in the broad open doorway, her 
whole small person one animated exclamation 
point, while Towser, just home from a 
leisurely round of afternoon visits, came for- 
ward to meet Hilary, wagging a dignified 
welcome. 

“If you don’t hurry, I’ll ‘hi yi’ you, like I 
do Fanny!” Patience warned them. She 
moved to one side, to let Hilary go on into the 
barn. “Now!” she demanded, “isn’t that 
something more?” 

From the stall beside Fanny’s, a horse’s 
head reached inquiringly out for the sugar 
with which already she had come to associate 
the frequent visits of these new friends. 
She was a pretty, well-made, little mare, light 
sorrel, with white markings, and with a slen- 
der, intelligent face. 

Hilary stood motionless, too surprised to 
speak. 


BEDELIA 


109 


“Her name’s Bedelia,” Patience said, doing 
the honors. “She’s very clever, she knows us 
all already. Fanny hasn’t been very polite to 
her, and she knows it — Bedelia does, I mean 
— sometimes, when Fanny isn’t looking, I’ve 
caught Bedelia sort of laughing at her — and I 
don’t blame her one bit. And, oh, Hilary, she 
can go — there’s no need to ‘hi yi’ her ” 

“But — ” Hilary turned to Pauline. 

“Uncle Paul sent her,” Pauline explained. 
“She came last Saturday afternoon. One of 
the men from Uncle Paul’s place in the coun- 
try brought her. She was born and bred at 
River Lawn — that’s Uncle Paul’s place — he 
says.” 

Hilary stroked the glossy neck gently, if 
Pauline had said the Sultan of Turkey, in- 
stead of Uncle Paul, she could hardly have 
been more surprised. “Uncle Paul — sent 
her to you!” she said slowly. 

“To us.” 

“Bless me, that isn’t all he sent,” Patience 
exclaimed. It seemed to Patience that they 
never would get to the end of their stoiy. 
“You just come look at this, Hilary Shaw!” 


110 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


she ran on through the opening connecting 
carriage-house with stable. 

“Oh!” Hilary cried, following with Pau- 
line. 

Beside the minister’s shabby old gig, stood 
the smartest of smart traps, and hanging on 
the wall behind it, a pretty russet harness, 
with silver mountings. 

Hilary sat down on an old saw horse; she 
felt again as though she must be dreaming. 

“There isn’t another such cute rig in town, 
Jim says so,” Patience said. Jim was the 
stable boy. “It beats Bell Ward’s all to 
pieces.” 

“But why — I mean, how did Uncle Paul 
ever come to send it to us?” Hilary said. Of 
course one had always known that there was 
— somewhere — a person named Uncle Paul; 
but he had appeared about as remote and in- 
definite a being as — that same Sultan of Tur- 
key, for instance. 

“After all, why shouldn’t he?” Pauline an- 
swered. 

“But I don’t believe he would’ve if Paul 
had not written to him that time,” Patience 


BEDELIA 


111 


added. “Maybe next time I tell you any- 
thing, you’ll believe me, Hilary Shaw.” 

But Hilary was staring at Pauline. “You 
didn’t write to Uncle Paul?” 

“I’m afraid I did.” 

“Was — was that the letter — you remember, 
that afternoon?” 

“I rather think I do remember.” 

“Paul, how did you ever dare?” 

“I was in the mood to dare anything that 
day.” 

“And did he answer; but of course he did.” 

“Yes — he answered. Though not right 
away.” 

“Was it a nice letter? Did he mind your 
having written? Paul, you didn’t ask him to 
send you — these,” Hilary waved her hand 
rather vaguely. 

“Hardly — he did that all on his own. It 
wasn’t a bad sort of letter, I’ll tell you about 
it by and by. We can go to the manor in 
style now, can’t we — even if father can’t spare 
Fanny. Bedelia’s perfectly gentle, I’ve 
driven her a little ways once or twice, to make 
sure. Father insisted on going with me. 


112 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


We created quite a sensation down street, I 
assure you.” 

“And Mrs. Dane said,” Patience cut in, 
“that in her young days, clergymen didn’t go 
kiting ’bout the country in such high-f angled 
rigs.” 

“Never mind what Mrs. Dane said, or 
didn’t say,” Pauline told her. 

“Miranda says, what Mrs. Dane hasn’t got 
to say on any subject, wouldn’t make you tired 
listening to it.” 

“Patience, if you don’t stop repeating what 
everyone says, I shall — ” 

“If you speak to mother — then you’ll be 
repeating,” Patience declared. “Maybe, I 
oughtn’t to have said those things before — 
company.” 

“I think we’d better go back to the house 
now,” Pauline suggested. 

“Sextoness Jane says,” Patience remarked, 
“that she’d have sure admired to have a horse 
and rig like that, when she was a girl. She 
says, she doesn’t suppose you’ll be passing by 
her house very often.” 

“And, now, please,” Hilary pleaded, when 


BEDELIA 


113 


she had been established in her hammock on 
the side porch, with her mother in her chair 
close by, and Pauline sitting on the steps, 
“I want to hear — everything. I’m what 
Miranda calls ‘fair mazed.’ ” 

So Pauline told nearly everything, blurring 
some of the details a little and getting to that 
twenty-five dollars a month, with which they 
were to do so much, as quickly as possible. 

“O Paul, really,” Hilary sat up among her 
cushions — “Why, it’ll be — riches, won’t it?” 

“It seems so.” 

“But — Oh, I’m afraid you’ve spent all the 
first twenty-five on me; and that’s not a fair 
division — is it, Mother Shaw?” 

“We used it quite according to Hoyle,” 
Pauline insisted. “We got our fun that way, 
didn’t we, Mother Shaw?” 

Their mother smiled. “I know I did.” 

“All the same, after this, you’ve simply got 
to ‘drink fair, Betsy,’ so remember,” Hilary 
warned them. 

“Bedtime, Patience,” Mrs. Shaw said, and 
Patience got slowly out of her big, wicker 
armchair. 


114 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“I did think — seeing there was company, — 
that probably you’d like me to stay up a little 
later to-night.” 

“If the ‘company’ takes my advice, she’ll 
go, too,” her mother answered. 

“The ‘company’ thinks she will.” Hilary 
slipped out of the hammock. “Mother, do 
you suppose Miranda’s gone to bed yet?” 

“I’ll go see,” Patience offered, willing to 
postpone the inevitable for even those few mo- 
ments longer. 

“What do you want with Miranda?” Pau- 
line asked. 

“To do something for me.” 

“Can’t I do it?” 

“No — and it must be done to-night. 
Mother, what are you smiling over?” 

“I thought it would be that way, dear.” 

“Miranda’s coming,” Patience called. 
“She’d just taken her back hair down, and 
she’s waiting to twist it up again. She’s got 
awful funny back hair.” 

“Patience! Patience!” her mother said re- 
provingly. 

“I mean, there’s such a little — ” 


BEDELIA 


115 


“Go up-stairs and get yourself ready for 
bed at once.” 

Miranda was waiting in the spare room. 
“You ain’t took sick, Hilary?” 

Hilary shook her head. “Please, Miranda, 
if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, will you 
bring Pauline’s bed in here?” 

“I guessed as much,” Miranda said, moving 
Hilary’s bed to one side. 

“Hilary — wouldn’t you truly rather have 
a room to yourself — for a change?” Pauline 
asked. 

“I have had one to myself — for eight days 
— and, now I’m going back to the old way.” 
Sitting among the cushions of the cozy corner, 
Hilary superintended operations, and when 
the two single white beds were standing side 
by side, in their accustomed fashion, the covers 
turned back for the night, she nodded in sat- 
isfied manner. “Thank you so much, Mi- 
randa; that’s as it should be. Go get your 
things, Paul. To-morrow, you must move in 
regularly. Upper drawer between us, and 
the rest share and share alike, you know.” 

Patience, who had hit upon the happy 


116 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


expedient of braiding her hair — braids, when 
there were a lot of them, took a long time — 
got slowly up from the hearth rug, her head 
a sight to behold, with its tiny, hornlike 
red braids sticking out in every direction. “I 
suppose I’d better be going. I wish I had 
someone to talk to, after I’d gone to bed.” 
And a deep sigh escaped her. 

Pauline kissed the wistful little face. 
“Never mind, old girl, you know you’d never 
stay awake long enough to talk to anyone.” 

She and Hilary stayed awake talking, how- 
ever, until Pauline’s prudence got the better 
of her joy in having her sister back in more 
senses than one. It was so long since they 
had had such a delightful bedtime talk. 

“Seeing Winton First Club,” Hilary said 
musingly. “Paul, you’re ever so clever. 
Shirley insisted those letters stood for ‘Sup- 
pression of Woman’s Foibles Club’; and Mr. 
Dayre suggested they meant, ‘Sweet Wild 
Flowers.’ ” 

“You’ve simply got to go to sleep now, 
Hilary, else mother’ll come and take me 
away.” 


BEDELIA 117 

Hilary sighed blissfully. “I’ll never say 
again — that nothing ever happens to us.” 

Tom and Josie came to supper the next 
night. Shirley was there, too, she had stopped 
in on her way to the post-office with her fa- 
ther that afternoon, to ask how Hilary was, 
and been captured and kept to supper and the 
first club meeting that followed. 

Hilary had been sure she would like to join, 
and Shirley’s prompt and delighted accept- 
ance of their invitation proved her right. 

“I’ve only got five names on my list,” Tom 
said, as the young folks settled themselves on 
the porch after supper. “I suppose we’ll 
think of others later.” 

“That’ll make ten, counting us five, to be- 
gin with,” Pauline said. 

“Bell and Jack Ward,” Tom took out his 
list, “the Dixon boys and Edna Ray. That’s 
all.” 

“I’d just like to know where I come in, 
Tom Brice!” Patience demanded, her voice 
vibrant with indignation. 

“Upon my word! I didn’t suppose — ” 


118 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“I am to belong! Ain’t I, Paul?” 

“But Patty—” 

“If you’re going to say no, you needn’t 
Patty me!” 

“We’ll see what mother thinks,” Hilary 
suggested. “You wouldn’t want to be the 
only little girl to belong?” 

“I shouldn’t mind,” Patience assured her, 
then feeling pretty sure that Pauline was get- 
ting ready to tell her to run away, she decided 
to retire on her own account. That blissful 
time, when she should be “Miss Shaw,” had 
one drawback, which never failed to assert it- 
self at times like these — there would be no 
younger sister subject to her authority. 

“Have you decided what we are to do?” 
Pauline asked Tom, when Patience had gone. 

“I should say I had. You’ll be up to a 
ride by next Thursday, Hilary? Not a very 
long ride.” 

“I’m sure I shall,” Hilary answered 
eagerly. “Where are we going?” 

“That’s telling.” 

“He won’t even tell me,” Josie said. 

Tom’s eyes twinkled. “You’re none of you 


BEDELIA 119 

to know until next Thursday. Say, at four 
o’clock.” 

“Oh,” Shirley said, “I think it’s going to 
be the nicest club that ever was.” 






CHAPTER VI 


PERSONALLY CONDUCTED 

















CHAPTER VI 


PERSONALLY CONDUCTED 

“Am I late?” Shirley asked, as Pauline 
came down the steps to meet her Thursday 
afternoon. 

“No, indeed, it still wants five minutes to 
four. Will you come in, or shall we wait out 
here? Hilary is under bond not to make her 
appearance until the last minute.” 

“Out here, please,” Shirley answered, sit- 
ting down on the upper step. “What a de- 
lightful old garden this is. Father has at last 
succeeded in finding me my nag, horses ap- 
pear to be at a premium in Winton, and even 
if he isn’t first cousin to your Bedelia, I’m 
coming to take you and Hilary to drive some 
afternoon. Father got me a surrey, because, 
later, we’re expecting some of the boys up, 
and we’ll need a two-seated rig.” 

“We’re coming to take you driving, too,” 
Pauline said. “Just at present, it doesn’t 


124 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


seem as if the summer would be long enough 
for all the things we mean to do in it.” 

“And you don’t know yet, what we are to 
do this afternoon?” 

“Only, that it’s to be a drive and, after- 
wards, supper at the Brices’. That’s all J osie, 
herself, knows about it. Tom had to take her 
and Mrs. Brice into so much of his confi- 
dence.” 

Through the drowsy stillness of the summer 
afternoon, came the notes of a horn, sounding 
nearer and nearer. A moment later, a stage 
drawn by two of the hotel horses turned in at 
the parsonage drive at a fine speed, drawing 
up before the steps where Pauline and Shirley 
were sitting, with considerable flourish. Be- 
side the driver sat Tom, in long linen duster, 
the megaphone belonging to the school team 
in one hand. Along each side of the stage 
was a length of white cloth, on which was let- 
tered — 

SEEING WINTON STAGE 

As the stage stopped, Tom sprang down, a 
most businesslike air on his boyish face. 


PERSONALLY CONDUCTED 125 


“This is the Shaw residence, I believe ?” he 
asked, consulting a piece of paper. 

“I — I reckon so,” Pauline answered, too 
taken aback to know quite what she was say- 
ing. 

“All right!” Tom said. “I understand — ” 

“Then it’s a good deal more than I do,” 
Pauline cut in. 

“That there are several young people here 
desirous of joining our little sight-seeing trip 
this afternoon.” 

From around the corner of the house at 
that moment peeped a small freckled face, the 
owner of which was decidedly very desirous of 
joining that trip. Only a deep sense of per- 
sonal injury kept Patience from coming for- 
ward, — she wasn’t going where she wasn’t 
wanted — but some day — they’d see! 

Shirley clapped her hands delightedly. 
“How perfectly jolly! Oh, I am glad you 
asked me to join the club.” 

“I’ll go tell Hilary!” Pauline said. “Tom, 
how ever — ” 

“I beg your pardon. Miss?” 

Pauline laughed and turned away. 


126 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“Oh, I say, Paul,” Tom dropped his mask 
of pretended dignity, “let the Imp come with 
us — this time.” 

Pauline looked doubtful. She, as well as 
Tom, had caught sight of that small flushed 
face, on which longing and indignation had 
been so plainly written. “I’m not sure that 
mother will — ” she began, “But I’ll see.” 

“Tell her — just this first time,” Tom urged, 
and Shirley added, “She would love it so.” 

“Mother says,” Pauline reported presently, 
“that Patience may go this time — only we’ll 
have to wait while she gets ready.” 

From an upper window came an eager 
voice. “I’m most ready now!” 

“She’ll never forget it — as long as she 
lives,” Shirley said, “and if she hadn’t gone 
she would never’ve forgotten that ” 

“Nor let us — for one while,” Pauline re- 
marked — “I’d a good deal rather work with 
than against that young lady.” 

Hilary came down then, looking ready and 
eager for the outing. She had been out in the 
trap with Pauline several times; once, even, 
as far as the manor to call upon Shirley. 


PERSONALLY CONDUCTED 127 


“Why,” she exclaimed, “you’ve brought the 
Folly! Tom, how ever did you manage it?” 

“Beg pardon, Miss?” 

Hilary shrugged her shoulders, coming 
nearer for a closer inspection of the big lum- 
bering stage. It had been new, when the 
present proprietor of the hotel, then a young 
man, now a middle-aged one, had come into 
his inheritance. Fresh back from a winter in 
town, he had indulged high hopes of booming 
his sleepy little village as a summer resort, 
and had ordered the stage — since christened 
the Folly — for the convenience and enjoy- 
ment of the guests — who had never come. A 
long idle lifetime the Folly had passed in the 
hotel carriage-house; used so seldom, as to 
make that using a village event, but never al- 
lowed to fall into disrepair, through some 
fancy of its owner. 

As Tom opened the door at the back now, 
handing his guests in with much ceremony, 
Hilary laughed softly. “It doesn’t seem 
quite — respectful to actually sit down in the 
poor old thing. I wonder, if it’s more indig- 
nant, or pleased, at being dragged out into 


128 THE S. W. F. CLUB 

the light of day for a parcel of young 
folks?” 

“ ‘Butchered to make a Roman Holiday’ ?” 
Shirley laughed. 

At that moment Patience appeared, rather 
breathless — but not half as much so as 
Miranda, who had been drawn into service, 
and now appeared also — “You ain’t half but- 
toned up behind, Patience!” she protested, 
“and your hair ribbon’s not tied fit to be seen. 
— My sakes, to think of anyone ever having 
named that young one Patience!” 

“I’ll overhaul her, Miranda,” Pauline com- 
forted her. “Come here, Patience.” 

“Please, I am to sit up in front with you, 
ain’t I, Tom?” Patience urged. “You and I 
always get on so beautifully together, you 
know.” 

Tom relaxed a second time. “I don’t see 
how I can refuse after that,” and the over- 
hauling process being completed, Patience 
climbed up to the high front seat, where she 
beamed down on the rest with such a look of 
joyful content that they could only smile back 
in response. 


PERSONALLY CONDUCTED 129 


From the doorway, came a warning voice. 
“Not too far, Tom, for Hilary; and remem- 
ber, Patience, what you have promised me.” 

“All right, Mrs. Shaw,” Tom assured her, 
and Patience nodded her head assentinglv. 

From the parsonage, they went first to the 
doctor’s. Josie was waiting for them at the 
gate, and as they drew up before it, with horn 
blowing, and horses almost prancing — the 
proprietor of the hotel had given them his best 
horses, in honor of the Folly — she stared from 
her brother to the stage, with its white placard, 
with much the same look of wonder in her 
eyes as Pauline and Hilary had shown. 

“Miss Brice?” Tom was consulting his list 
again. 

“So that’s what you’ve been concocting, 
Tom Brice!” Josie answered. 

Tom’s face was as sober as his manner. 
“I am afraid we are a little behind scheduled 
time, being unavoidably delayed.” 

“He means they had to wait for me to get 
ready,” Patience explained. “You didn’t ex- 
pect to see me along, did you, Josie?” And 
she smiled blandly. 


130 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“I don’t know what I did expect — certainly, 
not this.” Josie took her place in the stage, 
not altogether sure whether the etiquette of 
the occasion allowed of her recognizing its 
other inmates, or not. 

But Pauline nodded politely. ‘'Good af- 
ternoon. Lovely day, isn’t it?” she remarked, 
while Shirley asked, if she had ever made this 
trip before. 

“Not in this way,” Josie answered. “I’ve 
never ridden in the Folly before. Have you, 
Paul?” 

“Once, from the depot to the hotel, when I 
was a youngster, about Impatience’s age. 
You remember, Hilary?” 

“Of course I do, Uncle Jerry took me up 
in front.” Uncle Jerry was the name the 
owner of the stage went by in Winton. “He’d 
had a lot of Boston people up, and had been 
showing them around.” 

“This reminds me of the time father and I 
did our own New York in one of those big 
‘Seeing New York’ motors,” Shirley said. “I 
came home feeling almost as if we’d been mak- 
ing a trip ’round some foreign city.” 


PERSONALLY CONDUCTED 131 


“Tom can’t make Winton seem foreign,” 
Josie declared. 

There were three more houses to stop at, 
lower down the street. From windows and 
porches all along the route, laughing, curious 
faces stared wonderingly after them, while a 
small body-guard of children sprang up as if 
by magic to attend them on their way. This 
added greatly to the delight of Patience, who 
smiled condescendingly down upon various in- 
timates, blissfully conscious of the envy she 
was exciting in their breasts. It was delight- 
ful to be one of the club for a time, at least. 

“And now, if you please. Ladies and Gen- 
tlemen,” Tom had closed the door to upon 
the last of his party, “we will drive first to The 
Vermont House, a hostelry well known 
throughout the surrounding country, and con- 
ducted by one of Vermont’s best known and 
honored sons.” 

“Hear! Hear!” Jack Ward cried. “I say, 
Tom, get that off again where Uncle Jerry 
can hear it, and you’ll always be sure of his 
vote.” 

They had reached the rambling old hotel, 


182. THE S. W. F. CLUB 

from the front porch of which Uncle Jerry 
himself, surveyed them genially. 

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” standing up, 
Tom turned to face the occupants of the stage, 
his megaphone, carried merely as a badge of 
office, raised like a conductor’s baton, “I wish 
to impress upon your minds that the building 
now before you — liberal rates for the season 
— is chiefly remarkable for never having 
sheltered the Father of His Country.” 

“Now how do you know that?” Uncle 
Jerry protested. “Ain’t that North 
Chamber called the ‘Washington room’?” 

“Oh, but that’s because the first proprie- 
tor’s first wife occupied that room — and she 
was famous for her Washington pie,” Tom 
answered readily. “I assure you, sir, that 
any and all information which I shall have 
the honor to impart to these strangers within 
our gates may be relied upon for its accuracy.” 
He gave the driver the word, and the Folly 
continued on its way, stopping presently be- 
fore a little story-and-a-half cottage not far 
below the hotel and on a level with the street. 

“This cottage, my young friends,” Tom 


PERSONALLY CONDUCTED 133 


said impressively, “should be — and I trust is 
— enshrined deep within the hearts of all true 
Wintonites. Latterly, it has come to be 
called the Barker cottage, but its real title is 
‘The Flag House’; so called, because from 
that humble porch, the first Stars and Stripes 
ever seen in Winton flung its colors to the 
breeze. The original flag is still in posses- 
sion of a lineal descendant of its first owner, 
who is, unfortunately, not an inhabitant of this 
town.” The boyish gravity of tone and man- 
ner was not all assumed now. 

No one spoke for a moment; eleven pairs 
of young eyes were looking out at the little 
weather-stained building with -new interest. 
“I thought,” Bell Ward said at last, “that 
they called it the flag place, because someone 
of that name had used to live there.” 

“So did I,” Hilary said. 

As the stage moved on, Shirley leaned back 
for another look. “I shall get father to come 
and sketch it,” she said. “Isn’t it the quaint- 
est old place? ” 

“We will now proceed,” Tom announced, 
“to the village green, where I shall have the 


134 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


pleasure of relating to you certain anecdotes 
regarding the part it played in the early life 
of this interesting old village.” 

“Not too many, old man,” Tracy Dixon 
suggested hurriedly, “or it may prove a one- 
sided pleasure.” 

The green lay in the center of the town, — 
a wide, open space, with flagstaff in the mid- 
dle; fine old elms bordered it on all four sides. 
The Vermont House faced it, on the north, 
and on the opposite side stood the general 
store, belonging to Mr. Ward, with one or two 
smaller places of business. 

“The business section” of the town, Tom 
called it, and quite failed to notice Tracy’s 
lament that he had not brought his opera 
glasses with him. “Really, you know,” 
Tracy explained to his companions, “I should 
have liked awfully to see it. I’m mighty in- 
terested in business sections.” 

“Cut that out,” his brother Bob com- 
manded, “the chap up in front is getting ready 
to hold forth again.” 

They were simple enough, those anecdotes, 
that “the chap up in front” told them; but 


PERSONALLY CONDUCTED 135 


in the telling, the hoy’s voice lost again all 
touch of mock gravity. ITis listeners, sitting 
there in the June sunshine, looking out across 
the old green, flecked with the waving tree 
shadows, and bright with the buttercups nod- 
ding here and there, seemed to see those men 
and boys drilling there in the far-off summer 
twilights; to hear the sharp words of com- 
mand; the sound of fife and drum. And the 
familiar names mentioned more than once, 
well-known village names, names belonging 
to their own families in some instances, served 
to deepen the impression. 

“Why,” Edna Ray said slowly, “they’re 
like the things one learns at school; somehow, 
they make one realize that there truly was a 
Revolutionary War. Wherever did you pick 
up such a lot of town history, Tom?” 

“That’s telling,” Tom answered. 

Back up the broad, main street they went, 
past the pleasant village houses, with their 
bright, well-kept dooryards, under the wide- 
spreading trees beneath which so many gen- 
erations of young folks had come and gone; 
past the square, white parsonage, with its set- 


136 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


ting of green lawn ; past the old stone church, 
and on out into the by-roads of the village, 
catching now and then a glimpse of the great 
lake beyond; and now and then, down some 
lane, a bit of the street they had left. They 
saw it all with eyes that for once had lost the 
indifference of long familiarity, and were 
swift to catch instead its quiet, restful beauty, 
helped in this, perhaps, by Shirley’s very real 
admiration. 

The ride ended at Dr. Brice’s gate, and here 
Tom dropped his mantle of authority, hand- 
ing all further responsibility as to the enter- 
tainment of the party over to his sister. 

Hilary was carried off to rest until supper 
time, and the rest scattered about the garden, 
a veritable rose garden on that June after- 
noon, roses being Dr. Brice’s pet hobby. 

“It must be lovely to live in the country,” 
Shirley said, dropping down on the grass be- 
fore the doctor’s favorite La France , and lay- 
ing her face against the soft, pink petals of 
a half-blown bud. 

Edna eyed her curiously. She had rather 
resented the admittance of this city girl into 



“It Must be Lovely to Live in the Country” 


















. 








. 



























































. 




















N 
















PERSONALLY CONDUCTED 137 


their set. Shirley’s skirt and blouse were of 
white linen, there was a knot of red under the 
broad sailor collar, she was hatless and the 
dark hair, — never kept too closely within 
bounds — was tossed and blown ; there was 
certainly nothing especially cityfied in either 
appearance or manner. 

“That’s the way I feel about the city,” 
Edna said slowly, “it must be lovely to live 
there ." 

Shirley laughed. “It is. I reckon just be- 
ing alive anywhere such days as these ought 
to content one. You haven’t been over to the 
manor lately, have you? I mean since we 
came there. We’re really getting the garden 
to look like a garden. Reclaiming the wilder- 
ness, father calls it. You’ll come over now, 
won’t you — the club, I mean?” 

“Why, of course,” Edna answered, she 
thought she would like to go. “I suppose 
you’ve been over to the forts?” 

“Lots of times — father’s ever so interested 
in them, and it’s just a pleasant row across, 
after supper.” 

“I have fasted too long, I must eat again,” 


138 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


Tom remarked, coming across the lawn. 
“Miss Dayre, may I have the honor?” 

“Are you conductor, or merely club presi- 
dent now?” Shirley asked. 

“Oh, I’ve dropped into private life again. 
There comes Hilary — doesn’t look much like 
an invalid, does she?” 

“But she didn’t look very well the first time 
I saw her,” Shirley answered. 

The long supper table was laid under the 
apple trees at the foot of the garden, which in 
itself served to turn the occasion into a festive 
affair. 

“You’ve given us a bully send-off, Mr. 
President,” Bob declared. “It’s going to be 
sort of hard for the rest of us to keep up with 
you.” 

“By the way,” Tom said, “Dr. Brice — some 
of you may have heard of him — would like to 
become an honorary member of this club. 
Any contrary votes?” 

“What’s an honorary member?” Patience 
asked. Patience had been remarkably good 
that afternoon — so good that Pauline began to 
feel worried, dreading the reaction. 


PERSONALLY CONDUCTED 139 


“One who has all the fun and none of the 
work,” Tracy explained, a merry twinkle in his 
brown eyes. 

Patience considered the matter. “I should- 
n’t mind the work; but mother won’t let me 
join regularly — mother takes notions now and 
then — but, please mayn’t I be an honorary 
member?” 

“Onery, you mean, young lady!” Tracy 
corrected. 

Patience flashed a pair of scornful eyes at 
him. “Father says punning is the very lowest 
form of — ” 

“Never mind, Patience,” Pauline said, “we 
haven’t answered Tom yet. I vote we extend 
our thanks to the doctor for being willing to 
join.” 

“He isn’t a bit more willing than I am,” 
Patience observed. There was a general 
laugh among the real members, then Tom said, 
“If a Shaw votes for a Brice, I don’t very well 
see how a Brice can refuse to vote for a 
Shaw.” 

“The motion is carried,” Bob seconded him. 

“Subject to mother’s consent,” Pauline 


140 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


added, a quite unnecessary bit of elder sisterly 
interference, Patience thought. 

“And now, even if it is telling on yourself, 
suppose you own up, old man?” Jack Ward 
turned to Tom. “You see we don’t in the 
least credit you with having produced all that 
village history from your own stores of knowl- 
edge.” 

“I never said you need to,” Tom answered, 
“even the idea was not altogether original with 
me. 

Patience suddenly leaned forward, her face 
all alight with interest. “I love my love with 
an A,” she said slowly, “because he’s an — 
author.” 

Tom whistled. “Well, of all the uncanny 
young ones !” 

“It’s very simple,” Patience said loftily. 

“So it is. Imp,” Tracy exclaimed; “I love 
him with an A, because he’s an — A-M-E-R- 
I-C-A-N!” 

“I took him to the sign of The Apple 
Tree,” Bell took up the thread. 

“And fed him (mentally) on subjects — 
^ntedeluvian, or almost so,” Hilary added. 


PERSONALLY CONDUCTED 141 


“What are you talking about?” Edna asked 
impatiently. 

“Mr. Allen,” Pauline told her. 

“I saw him and Tom walking down the back 
lane the other night,” Patience explained. 
Patience felt that she had won her right to 
belong to the club now — they’d see she wasn’t 
just a silly little girl. “Father says he — I 
don’t mean Tom — ” 

“We didn’t suppose you did,” Tracy 
laughed. 

“Knows more history than any other man 
in the state; especially, the history of the 
state.” 

“Mr. Allen!” Shirley exclaimed. “T. C. 
Allen! Why, father and I read one of his 
books just the other week. It’s mighty inter- 
esting. Does he live in Winton?” 

“He surely does,” Bob grinned, “and every 
little while he comes up to school and puts us 
through our paces. It’s his boast that he was 
born, bred and educated right in Vermont. 
He isn’t a bad old buck — if he wouldn’t pester 
a fellow with too many questions.” 

“He lives out beyond us,” Hilary told 


142 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


Shirley. “There’s a great apple tree right in 
front of the gate. He has an old house- 
keeper to look after him. I wish you could 
see his books — he’s literally surrounded with 
them.” 

“Not storybooks,” Patience added. “He 
says, they’re books full of stories, if one’s a 
mind to look for them.” 

“Please,” Edna protested, “let’s change the 
subject. Are we to have badges, or not?” 

“Pins,” Bell suggested. 

“Pins would have to be made to order,” 
Pauline objected, “and would be more or less 
expensive.” 

“And it’s an unwritten by-law of this club, 
that we shall go to no unnecessary expense,” 
Tom insisted. 

“But — ” Bell began. 

“Oh, I know what you’re thinking,” Tom 
broke in, “but Uncle Jerry didn’t charge for 
the stage — he said he was only too glad to 
have the poor thing used — ’twas a dull life for 
her, shut up in the carriage-house year in and 
year out.” 

“The Folly isn’t a she,” Patience protested. 


PERSONALLY CONDUCTED 143 


“Folly generally is feminine,” Tracy said, 
“and so — ” 

“And he let us have the horses, too — for our 
initial outing,” Tom went on. “Said the 
stage wouldn’t be of much use without them.” 

“Three cheers for Uncle Jerry!” Bob Dixon 
cried. “Let’s make him an honorary mem- 
ber.” 

“But the badges,” Edna said. “I never 
saw such people for going off at tangents.” 

“Ribbon would be pretty,” Shirley sug- 
gested, “with the name of the club in gilt let- 
ters. I can letter pretty well.” 

Her suggestion was received with general 
acclamation, and after much discussion, as to 
color, dark blue was decided on. 

“Blue goes rather well with red,” Tom said, 
“and as two of our members have red hair,” 
his glance went from Patience to Pauline. 

“I move we adjourn, the president’s getting 
personal,” Pauline pushed back her chair. 

“Who’s turn is it to be next?” Jack asked. 

They drew lots with blades of grass; it fell 
to Hilary. “I warn you,” she said, “that I 
can’t come up to Tom.” 


144 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


Then the first meeting of the new club broke 
up, the members going their various ways. 
Shirley went as far as the parsonage, where 
she was to wait for her father. 

“I’ve had a beautiful time,” she said warmly. 
“And I’ve thought what to do when my turn 
comes. Only, I think you’ll have to let father 
in as an honorary, I’ll need him to help me 
out.” 

“We’ll be only too glad'” Pauline said 
heartily. “This club’s growing fast, isn’t it? 
Have you decided, Hilary? ” 

Hilary shook her head, “N-not exactly; 
I’ve sort of an idea.” 


CHAPTER VII 


HILARY’S TURN 



CHAPTER VII 

Hilary’s turn 


Pauline and Hilary were up in their own 
room, the “new room,” as it had come to be 
called, deep in the discussion of certain 
samples that had come in that morning’s 
mail. 

Uncle Paul’s second check was due before 
long now, and then there were to be new sum- 
mer dresses, or rather the goods for them, one 
apiece all around. 

“Because, of course,” Pauline said, turning 
the pretty scraps over, “Mother Shaw’s got to 
have one, too. We’ll have to get it — on the 
side — or she’ll declare she doesn’t need it, and 
she does.” 

“Just the goods won’t come to so very 
much,” Hilary said. 

“No, indeed, and mother and I can make 
them.” 


148 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“We certainly got a lot out of that other 
check, or rather, you and mother did,” Hilary 
went on. “And it isn’t all gone?” 

“Pretty nearly, except the little we decided 
to lay by each month. But we did stretch' it 
out in a good many directions. I don’t sup- 
pose any of the other twenty-fives will seem 
quite so big.” 

“But there won’t be such big things to get 
with them,” Hilary said, “except these 
muslins.” 

“It’s unspeakably delightful to have money 
for the little unnecessary things, isn’t it?” 
Pauline rejoiced. 

That first check had really gone a long 
ways. After buying the matting and paper, 
there had been quite a fair sum left ; enough to 
pay for two magazine subscriptions, one a re- 
view that Mr. Shaw had long wanted to take, 
another, one of the best of the current month- 
lies; and to lay in quite a store of new ribbons 
and pretty turnovers, and several yards of 
silkaline to make cushion covers for the side 
porch, for Pauline, taking hint from Hilary’s 
out-door parlor at the farm, had been quick to 


HILARY’S TURN 


149 


make the most of their own deep, vine-shaded 
side porch at the parsonage. 

The front piazza belonged in a measure to 
the general public, there were too many peo- 
ple coming and going to make it private 
enough for a family gathering place. But 
the side porch was different, broad and square, 
only two or three steps from the ground; it 
was their favorite gathering place all through 
the long, hot summers. 

With a strip of carpet for the floor, a small 
table resurrected from the garret, a bench and 
three wicker rockers, freshly painted green, 
and Hilary’s hammock, rich in pillows, Pau- 
line felt that their porch was one to be proud 
of. To Patience had been entrusted the care 
of keeping the old blue and white canton bowl 
filled with fresh flowers, and there were gen- 
erally books and papers on the table. And 
they might have done it all before, Pauline 
thought now, if they had stopped to think. 

“Have you decided?” Hilary asked her, 
glancing at the sober face bent over the 
samples. 

“I believe I’d forgotten all about them; I 


150 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


think I’ll choose this — ” Pauline held up a 
sample of blue and white striped dimity. 

“That is pretty.” 

“You can have it, if you like.” 

“Oh, no, I’ll have the pink.” 

“And the lavender dot, for Mother Shaw?” 

“Yes,” Hilary agreed. 

“Patience had better have straight white, 
it’ll be in the wash so often.” 

“Why not let her choose for herself, Paul?” 
Hilary suggested. 

“Hilary! Oh, Hilary Shaw!” Patience 
called excitedly, at that moment from down- 
stairs. 

“Up here!” Hilary called back, and Pa- 
tience came hurrying up, stumbling more than 
once in her eagerness. The next moment, she 
pushed wide the door of the “new room.” 
“See what’s come! It’s addressed to you, 
Hilary — it came by express — Jed brought it 
up from the depot!” Jed was the village ex- 
pressman. 

She deposited her burden on the table be- 
side Hilary. It was a good-sized, square 
box, and with all that delightful air of mys- 


HILARY’S TURN 151 

tery about it that such packages usually 
have. 

“What do you suppose it is, Paul?” Hilary 
cried. “Why, I’ve never had anything come 
unexpectedly, like this, before.” 

“A whole lot of things are happening to us 
that never ’ve happened before,” Patience 
said. “See, it’s from Uncle Paul!” she 
pointed to the address at the upper left-hand 
corner of the package. “Oh, Hilary, let me 
open it, please, I’ll go get the tack hammer.” 

“Tell mother to come,” Hilary said. 

“Maybe it’s books, Paul!” she added, as 
Patience scampered off. 

Pauline lifted the box.* “It doesn’t seem 
quite heavy enough for books.” 

“Rut what else could it be?” 

Pauline laughed. “It isn’t another Bedelia, 
at all events. It could be almost anything. 
Hilary, I believe Uncle Paul is really glad I 
wrote to him.” 

“Well, I’m not exactly sorry,” Hilary de- 
clared. 

“Mother can’t come yet,” Patience ex- 
plained, reappearing. “She says not to wait. 


152 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


It’s that tiresome Mrs. Dane; she just seems 
to know when we don’t want her, and then to 
come — only, I suppose if she waited ’til we did 
want to see her, she’d never get here.” 

“Mother didn’t say that, Impatience, and 
you’d better not let her hear you saying it,” 
Pauline warned. 

But Patience was busy with the tack ham- 
mer. “You can take the inside covers off,” 
she said to Hilary. 

“Thanks, awfully,” Hilary murmured. 

“It’ll be my turn next, won’t it?” Patience 
dropped the tack hammer, and wrenched off 
the cover of the box — “Go ahead, Hilary! 
Oh, how slow you are!” 

For Hilary was going about her share of the 
unpacking in the most leisurely way. “I 
want to guess first,” she said. “Such a lot of 
wrappings ! It must be something break- 
able.” 

“A picture, maybe,” Pauline suggested. 
Patience dropped cross-legged on the floor. 
“Then I don’t think Uncle Paul’s such a very 
sensible sort of person,” she said. 

“No, not pictures!” Hilary lifted some- 


HILARY’S TURN 


153 


thing from within the box, “but something to 
get pictures with. See, Paul!” 

“A camera! Oh, Hilary!” 

“And not a little tiny one.” Patience 
leaned over to examine the box. “It’s a three 
and a quarter by four and a quarter. We 
can have fun now, can’t we?” Patience be- 
lieved firmly in the cooperative principle. 

“Tom’ll show you how to use it,” Pauline 
said. “He fixed up a dark room last fall, you 
know, for himself.” 

“And here are all the doings.” Patience 
came to investigate the further contents of the 
express package. “Films and those funny 
little pans for developing in, and all.” 

Inside the camera was a message to the ef- 
fect that Mr. Shaw hoped his niece would be 
pleased with his present and that it would add 
to the summer’s pleasures. 

“He’s getting real uncley, isn’t he?” Pa- 
tience observed. Then she caught sight of the 
samples Pauline had let fall. “Oh, how 
pretty! Are they for dresses for us?” 

“They’d make pretty scant ones, I’d say,” 
Pauline answered. 


154 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“Silly!” Patience spread the bright scraps 
out on her blue checked gingham apron. “I 
just bet you’ve been choosing! Why didn’t 
you call me?” 

“To help us choose?” Pauline asked, with a 
laugh. 

But at the present moment, her small sister 
was quite impervious to sarcasm. “ I think 
I’ll have this,” she pointed to a white ground, 
closely sprinkled with vivid green dots. 

“Carrots and greens!” Pauline declared, 
glancing at her sister’s red curls. “You’d 
look like an animated boiled dinner! If you 
please, who said anything about your 
choosing?” 

“You look ever so nice in all white, Patty,” 
Hilary said hastily. 

“Have you and Paul chosen all white?” 

“N-no” 

“Then I shan’t!” She looked up quickly, 
her blue eyes very persuasive. “I don’t very 
often have a brand new, just-out-of-the-store 
dress, do I?” 

Pauline laughed. “Only don’t let it be the 
green then. Good, here’s mother, at last!” 


HILARY’S TURN 


155 


“Mummy, is blue or green better?” Pa- 
tience demanded. 

Mrs. Shaw examined and duly admired the 
camera, and decided in favor of a blue dot; 
then she said, “Mrs. Boyd is down-stairs, 
Hilary.” 

“How nice!” Hilary jumped up. “I want 
to see her most particularly.” 

“Bless me, child!” Mrs. Boyd exclaimed, as 
Hilary came into the sitting-room, “how you 
are getting on! Why, you don’t look like the 
same girl of three weeks back.” 

Hilary sat down beside her on the sofa. 
“I’ve got a most tremendous favor to ask, 
Mrs. Boyd.” 

“I’m glad to hear that! I hear you young 
folks are having fine times lately. Shirley 
was telling me about the club the other night.” 

“It’s about the club — and it’s in two parts; 
first, won’t you and Mr. Boyd be honorary 
members? — That means you can come to the 
good times if you like, you know. — And the 
other is — you see, it’s my turn next — ” And 
when Pauline came down, she found the two 
deep in consultation. 


156 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


The next afternoon, Patience carried out 
her long-intended plan of calling at the manor. 
Mrs. Shaw was from home for the day, Pau- 
line and Hilary were out in the trap with Tom 
and Josie and the camera. “So there’s really 
no one to ask permission of, Towser,” Pa- 
tience explained, as they started off down the 
back lane. “Father’s got the study door 
closed , of course that means he mustn’t be dis- 
turbed for anything unless it’s absolutely 
necessary.” 

Towser wagged comprehendingly. He 
was quite ready for a ramble this bright after- 
noon, especially a ramble ’cross lots. 

Shirley and her father were not at home, 
neither — which was even more disappointing 
— were any of the dogs; so, after a short chat 
with Betsy Todd, considerably curtailed by 
that body’s too frankly expressed wonder that 
Patience should’ve been allowed to come unat- 
tended by any of her elders, she and Towser 
wandered home again. 

In the lane, they met Sextoness Jane, sit- 
ting on the roadside, under a shady tree. 
She and Patience exchanged views on parish 


HILARY’S TURN 157 

matters, discussed the new club, and had an 
all-round good gossip. 

“My sakes!” Jane said, her faded eyes bright 
with interest, “it must seem like Christmas all 
the time up to your house.” She looked past 
Patience to the old church beyond, around 
which her life had centered itself for so many 
years. “There weren’t ever such doings at the 
parsonage — nor anywhere else, what I knowed 
of — when I was a girl. Why, that Bedelia 
horse! Seems like she give an air to the whole 
place — so pretty and high-stepping — it’s 
most’s good’s a circus — not that I’ve ever been 
to a circus, but I’ve hear tell on them — just to 
see her go prancing by.” 

“I think,” Patience said that evening, as 
they were all sitting on the porch in the twi- 
light, “I think that Jane would like awfully 
to* belong to our club.” 

“Have you started a club, too?” Pauline 
teased. 

Patience tossed her red head. “ ‘The S. W. 
F. Club,’ I mean; and you know it, Paul 
Shaw. When I get to be fifteen, I shan’t act 
half so silly as some folks.” 


158 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“What ever put that idea in your head?” 
Hilary asked. It was one of Hilary’s chief 
missions in life to act as intermediary between 
her younger and older sister. 

“Oh, I just gathered it, from what she said. 
Towser and I met her this afternoon, on our 
way home from the manor.” 

“From where, Patience?” her mother asked 
quickly, with that faculty for taking hold of 
the wrong end of a remark, that Patience had 
had occasion to deplore more than once. 

And in the diversion this caused, Sextoness 
Jane was forgotten. 

“Here comes Mr. Boyd, Hilary!” Pauline 
called from the foot of the stairs. 

Hilary finished tying the knot of cherry 
ribbon at her throat, then snatching up her 
big sun-hat from the bed, she ran down-stairs. 

Before the side door, stood the big wagon, 
in which Mr. Boyd had driven over from the 
farm, its bottom well filled with fresh straw. 
For Hilary’s outing was to be a cherry picnic 
at The Maples, with supper under the trees, 
and a drive home later by moonlight. 


HILARY’S TURN 


159 


Shirley had brought over the badges a day 
or two before; the blue ribbon, with its gilt 
lettering, gave an added touch to the girls’ 
white dresses and cherry ribbons. 

Mr. Day re had been duly made an honorary 
member. He and Shirley were to meet the 
rest of the party at the farm. As for 
Patience H. M., as Tom called her, she had 
been walking very softly the past few days. 
There had been no long rambles without per- 
mission, no making calls on her own account. 
There had been a private interview between 
herself and Mr. Boyd, whom she had met, not 
altogether by chance, down street the day be- 
fore. 

The result was that, at the present moment, 
Patience — white-f rocked, blue-badged, cher- 
ry-ribboned — was sitting demurely in one 
corner of the big wagon. 

Mr. Boyd chuckled as he glanced down at 
her; a body’d have to get up pretty early in 
the morning to get ahead of that youngster. 
Though not in white, nor wearing cherry 
ribbons, Mr. Boyd sported his badge with 
much complacency. Winton was looking up, 


160 THE S. W. F. CLUB 

decidedly. ’Twasn’t such a slow old place, 
after all. 

“All ready?” he asked, as Pauline slipped a 
couple of big pasteboard boxes under the 
wagon seat, and threw in some shawls for the 
coming home. 

“All ready. Good-by, Mother Shaw. Re- 
member, you and father have got to come 
with us one of these days. I guess if Mr. 
Boyd can take a holiday you can.” 

“Good-by,” Hilary called, and Patience 
waved joyously. “This’ll make two times,” 
she comforted herself, “and two times ought 
to be enough to establish what father calls ‘a 
precedent.’ ” 

They stopped at the four other houses in 
turn; then Mr. Boyd touched his horses up 
lightly, rattling them along at a good rate out 
on to the road leading to the lake and so to 
The Maples. 

There was plenty of fun and laughter by 
the way. They had gone picnicking together 
so many summers, this same crowd, had had so 
many good times together. “And yet it seems 
different, this year, doesn’t it?” Bell said. 


HILARY’S TURN 


161 


“We really aren’t doing new things — exactly, 
still they seem so.” 

Tracy touched his badge. “These are the 
‘Blue Ribbon Brand,’ best goods in the 
market.” 

“Come to think of it, there aren’t so very 
many new things one can do,” Tom remarked. 

“Not in Winton, at any rate,” Bob added. 

“If anyone dares say anything derogatory 
to Winton, on this, or any other, outing of the 
‘S. W. F. Club,’ he, or she, will get into 
trouble,” Josie said sternly. 

Mrs. Boyd was waiting for them on the 
steps, Shirley close by, while a glimpse of a 
white umbrella seen through the trees told 
that Mr. Dayre was not far off. 

“It’s the best cherry season in years,” Mrs. 
Boyd declared, as the young folks came laugh- 
ing and crowding about her. She was a prime 
favorite with them all. “My, how nice you 
look! Those badges are mighty pretty.” 

“Where’s yours?” Pauline demanded. 

“It’s in my top drawer, dear. Looks like 
I’m too old to go wearing such things, though 
’twas ever so good in you to send me one.” 


162 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“Hilary,” Pauline turned to her sister, 
“I’m sure Mrs. Boyd’ll let you go to her top 
drawer. Not a stroke of business does this 
club do, until this particular member has her 
badge on.” 

“Now,” Tom asked, when that little matter 
had been attended to, “what’s the order of the 
day?” 

“I hope you’ve worn old dresses?” Mrs. 
Boyd said. 

“I haven’t, ma’am,” Tracy announced. 

“Order!” Bob called. 

“Eat all you like- — so long’s you don’t get 
sick — and each pick a nice basket to take 
home,” Mrs. Boyd explained. There were no 
cherries anywhere else quite so big and fine, 
as those at The Maples. 

“You to command, we to obey!” Tracy de- 
clared. 

“Boys to pick, girls to pick up,” Tom 
ordered, as they scattered about among the 
big, bountifully laden trees. 

“For cherry time, 

Is merry time,” 


HILARY’S TURN 


163 


Shirley improvised, catching the cluster of 
great red and white cherries Jack tossed down 
to her. 

Even more than the rest of the young folks, 
Shirley was getting the good of this happy, 
out-door summer, with its quiet pleasures and 
restful sense of home life. She had never 
known anything before like it. It was very 
different, certainly, from the studio life in 
New York, different from the sketching 
rambles she had taken other summers with her 
father. They were delightful, too, and it was 
pleasant to think of going back to them again 
— some day; but just at present, it was good 
to be a girl among other girls, interested in 
all the simple, homely things each day brought 
up. 

And her father was content, too, else how 
could she have been so ? It was doing him no 
end of good. Painting a little, sketching a lit- 
tle, reading and idling a good deal, and 
through it all, immensely amused at the en- 
thusiasm with which his daughter threw her- 
self into the village life. “I shall begin to 
think soon, that you were born and raised in 


164 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


Winton,” he had said to her that very morn- 
ing, as she came in fresh from a conference 
with Betsy Todd. Betsy might be spending 
her summer in a rather out-of-the-way spot, 
and her rheumatism might prevent her from 
getting into town — as she expressed it — but 
very little went on that Betsy did not hear of, 
and she was not one to keep her news to her- 
self. 

“So shall I,” Shirley had laughed back. 
She wondered now, if Pauline or Hilary 
would enjoy a studio winter, as much as she 
was reveling in her Winton summer? She 
decided that probably they would. 

Cherry time was merry time that afternoon. 
Of course, Bob fell out of one of the trees, but 
Bob was so used to tumbling, and the others 
were so used to having him tumble, that no 
one paid much attention to it; and equally, of 
course, Patience tore her dress and had to be 
taken in hand by Mrs. Boyd. 

“Every rose must have its thorns, you know, 
kid,” Tracy told her, as she was borne away 
for this enforced retirement. “We’ll leave a 
few cherries, ’gainst you get back.” 


HILARY’S TURN 


165 


Patience elevated her small freckled nose, 
she was an adept at it. “ I reckon they will 
be mighty few — if you have anything to do 
with it.” 

“You’re having a fine time, aren’t you, 
Senior?” Shirley asked, as Mr. Dayre came 
scrambling down from his tree; he had been 
routed from his sketching and pressed into 
service by his indefatigable daughter. 

“Scrumptious! Shirley, you’ve got a fine 
color — only it’s laid on in spots.” 

“You’re spattery, too,” she retorted. “I 
must go help lay out the supper now.” 

“Will anyone want supper, after so many 
cherries?” Mr. Dayre asked. 

“Will they?” Pauline laughed. “Well, 
you just wait and see.” 

Some of the boys brought the table from 
the house, stretching it out to its uttermost 
length. The girls laid the cloth, Mrs. Boyd 
provided, and unpacked the boxes stacked on 
the porch. From the kitchen came an ap- 
petizing odor of hot coffee. Hilary and Bell 
went off after flowers for the center of the 
table. 


166 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“We’ll put one at each place, suggestive of 
the person — like a place card,” Hilary pro- 
posed. 

“Here’s a daisy for Mrs. Boyd,” Bell 
laughed. 

“Let’s give that to Mr. Boyd and cut her 
one of these old-fashioned spice pinks,” 
Hilary said. 

“Better put a bit of pepper-grass for the 
Imp,” Tracy suggested, as the girls went from 
place to place up and down the long table. 

“Paul’s to have a pansy,” Hilary insisted. 
She remembered how, if it hadn’t been for 
Pauline’s “thought” that wet May afternoon, 
everything would still be as dull and dreary as 
it was then. 

At her own place she found a spray of be- 
lated wild roses, Tom had laid there, the pink 
of their petals not more delicate than the soft 
color coming and going in the girl’s face. 

“We’ve brought for-get-me-not for you, 
Shirley,” Bell said, “so that you won’t forget 
us when you get back to the city.” 

“As if I were likely to!” Shirley exclaimed. 

“Sound the call to supper, sonny!” Tom told 


HILARY’S TURN 


167 


Bob, and Bob, raising the farm dinner-horn, 
sounded it with a will, making the girls cover 
their ears with their hands and bringing the 
boys up with a rush. 

“It’s a beautiful picnic, isn’t it?” Patience 
said, reappearing in time to slip into place 
with the rest. 

“And after supper, I will read you the club 
song,” Tracy announced. 

“Are we to have a club song?” Edna asked. 

“We are.” 

“Read it now, son — while we eat,” Tom 
suggested. 

Tracy rose promptly — “Mind you save me 
a few scraps then. First, it isn’t original — ” 

“All the better,” Jack commented. 

“Hush up, and listen — 

“ ‘A cheerful world? — It surely is. 

And if you understand your biz 
You’ll taboo the worry worm, 

And cultivate the happy germ. 

“ ‘It’s a habit to be happy, 

Just as much as to be scrappy. 

So put the frown away awhile, 

And try a little sunny smile.’ ” 


168 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


There was a generous round of applause. 
Tracy tossed the scrap of paper across the 
table to Bell. “Put it to music, before the 
next round-up, if you please.” 

Bell nodded. “I’ll do my best.” 

“We’ve got a club song and a club badge, 
and we ought to have a club motto,” Josie 
said. 

“It’s right to your hand, in your song,” her 
brother answered. “ ‘It’s a habit to be 
happy.’ ” 

“Good!” Pauline seconded him, and the 
motto was at once adopted. 


CHAPTER VIII 


SNAP-SHOTS 







CHAPTER VIII 


SNAP-SHOTS 

Bell Ward set the new song to music, a 
light, catchy tune, easy to pick up. It took 
immediately, the boys whistled it, as they came 
and went, and the girls hummed it. Patience, 
with cheerful impartiality, did both, in season 
and out of season. 

It certainly looked as though it were getting 
to be a habit to be happy among a good many 
persons in Winton that summer. The spirit 
of the new club seemed in the very atmos- 
phere. 

A rivalry, keen but generous, sprang up be- 
tween the club members in the matter of dis- 
covering new ways of “Seeing Winton,” or, 
failing that, of giving a new touch to the old 
familiar ones. 

There were many informal and unexpected 
outings, besides the club’s regular ones, some- 


172 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


times amongst all the members, often among 
two or three of them. 

Frequently, Shirley drove over in the sur- 
rey, and she and Pauline and Hilary, with 
sometimes one of the other girls, would go 
for long rambling drives along the quiet coun- 
try roads, or out beside the lake. Shirley gen- 
erally brought her sketch-book and there were 
pleasant stoppings here and there. 

And there were few days on which Bedelia 
and the trap were not out, Bedelia enjoying 
the brisk trots about the country quite as much 
as her companions. 

Hilary soon earned the title of 4 ‘the kodak 
fiend,” Josie declaring she took pictures in 
her sleep, and that “Have me; have my 
camera,” was Hilary’s present motto. Cer- 
tainly, the camera was in evidence at all the 
outings, and so far, Hilary had fewer failures 
to her account than most beginners. Her 
“picture diary” she called the big scrap-book 
in which was mounted her record of the sum- 
mer’s doings. 

Those doings were proving both numerous 
and delightful. Mr. Shaw, as an honorary 


SNAP-SHOTS 


173 


member, had invited the club to a fishing 
party, which had been an immense success. 
The doctor had followed it by a moonlight 
drive along the lake and across on the old sail 
ferry to the New York side, keeping strictly 
within that ten-mile-from-home limit, though 
covering considerably more than ten miles in 
the coming and going. 

There had been picnics of every description, 
to all the points of interest and charm in and 
about the village; an old-time supper at the 
Wards’, at which the club members had ap- 
peared in old-fashioned costumes; a straw- 
berry supper on the church lawn, to which all 
the church were invited, and which went off 
rather better than some of the sociables had in 
times past. 

As the Winton Weekly News declared 
proudly, it was the gayest summer the village 
had known in years. Mr. Paul Shaw’s theory 
about developing home resources was proving 
a sound one in this instance at least. 

Hilary had long since forgotten that she 
had ever been an invalid, had indeed, some- 
times, to be reminded of that fact. She had 


174 THE S. W. F. CLUB 

quite discarded the little “company” fiction, 
except now and then, by way of a joke. 
“Who’d want to be company?” she protested. 
“I’d rather be one of the family these days.” 

“That’s all very well,” Patience retorted, 
“when you’re getting all the good of being 
both. You’ve got the company room.” 
Patience had not found her summer quite as 
cloudless as some of her elders; being an hon- 
orary member had not meant all of the fun in 
her case. She wished very much that it were 
possible to grow up in a single night, thus wip- 
ing out forever that drawback of being “a lit- 
tle girl.” 

Still, on the whole, she managed to get a 
fair share of the fun going on and quite 
agreed with the editor of the Weekly News , 
going so far as to tell him so when she met him 
down street. She had a very kindly feeling in 
her heart for the pleasant spoken little editor ; 
had he not given her her full honors every 
time she had had the joy of being “among 
those present”? 

There had been three of those checks from 
Uncle Paul; it was wonderful how far each 


SNAP-SHOTS 


175 


had been made to go. It was possible nowa- 
days to send for a new book, when the reviews 
were more than especially tempting. There 
had also been a tea-table added to the other 
attractions of the side porch, not an expensive 
affair, but the little Japanese cups and 
saucers were both pretty and delicate, as was 
the rest of the service; while Miranda’s cream 
cookies and sponge cakes were, as Shirley de- 
clared, good enough to be framed. Even the 
minister appeared now and then of an after- 
noon, during tea hour, and the young people, 
gathered on the porch, began to find him a 
very pleasant addition to their little company, 
he and they getting acquainted, as they had 
never gotten acquainted before. 

Sextoness Jane came every week now to 
help with the ironing, which meant greater 
freedom in the matter of wash dresses; and 
also, to Sextoness Jane herself, the certainty 
of a day’s outing every week. To Sextoness 
Jane, those Tuesdays at the parsonage were 
little short of a dissipation. Miranda, un- 
bending in the face of such sincere and humble 
admiration, was truly gracious. The glimpses 


176 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


the little bent, old sextoness got of the young 
folks, the sense of life going on about her, were 
as good as a play, to quote her own simile, 
confided of an evening to Tobias, her great 
black cat, the only other inmate of the old cot- 
tage. 

“I reckon Uncle Paul would be rather sur- 
prised,” Pauline said one evening, “if he could 
know all the queer sorts of ways in which we 
use his money. But the little easings-up do 
count for so much.” 

“Indeed they do,” Hilary agreed warmly, 
“though it hasn’t all gone for easings-ups, as 
you call them, either.” She had sat down 
right in the middle of getting ready for bed, 
to revel in her ribbon box ; she so loved pretty 
ribbons ! 

The committee on finances, as Pauline 
called her mother, Hilary, and herself, held 
frequent meetings. “And there’s always one 
thing,” the girl would declare proudly, “the 
treasury is never entirely empty.” 

She kept faithful account of all money re- 
ceived and spent ; each month a certain amount 
was laid away for the “rainy day” — which 


SNAP-SHOTS 


177 


meant, really, the time when the checks should 
cease to come — “for, you know, Uncle Paul 
only promised them for the summer ” Pau- 
line reminded the others, and herself, rather 
frequently. Nor was all of the remainder 
ever quite used up before the coming of the 
next check. 

“You’re quite a business woman, my dear,” 
Mr. Shaw said once, smiling over the carefully 
recorded entries in the little account-book she 
showed him. “We must have named you 
rightly.” 

She wrote regularly to her uncle; her letters 
unconsciously growing more friendly and 
informal from week to week. They were 
bright, vivid letters, more so than Pauline had 
any idea of. Through them, Mr. Paul Shaw 
felt himself becoming very well acquainted 
with these young relatives whom he had never 
seen, and in whom, as the weeks went by, he 
felt himself growing more and more inter- 
ested. 

Without realizing it, he got into the habit 
of looking forward to that weekly letter; the 
girl wrote a nice clear hand, there didn’t seem 


178 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


to be any nonsense about her, and she had a 
way of going right to her point that was most 
satisfactory. It seemed sometimes as if he 
could see the old white parsonage and ivy- 
covered church; the broad tree-shaded lawns; 
the outdoor parlor, with the young people 
gathered about the tea-table; Bedelia, pick- 
ing her way along the quiet country roads; 
the great lake in all its moods; the manor 
house. 

Sometimes Pauline would enclose one or 
two of Hilary’s snap-shots of places, or per- 
sons. At one of these, taken the day of the 
fishing picnic, and under which Hilary had 
written “The best catch of the season,” Mr. 
Paul Shaw looked long and intently. Some- 
how he had never pictured Phil to himself as 
middle-aged. If anyone had told him, when 
the lad was a boy, that the time would come 
when they would be like strangers to each 
other — Mr. Paul Shaw slipped the snap-shot 
and letter back into their envelope. 

It was that afternoon that he spent con- 
siderable time over a catalogue devoted en- 
tirely to sporting goods; and it was a fort- 


SNAP-SHOTS 


179 


night later that Patience came flying down 
the garden path to where Pauline and Hilary 
were leaning over the fence, paying a morning 
call to Bedelia, sunning herself in the back 
pasture. 

“You’ll never guess what’s come this time! 
And Jed says he reckons he can haul it out 
this afternoon if you’re set on it ! And it’s ad- 
dressed to the ‘Misses Shaw,’ so that means it’s 
mine 3 too!” Patience dropped on the grass, 
quite out of breath. 

The “it” proved to be a row-boat with a 
double set of oar-locks, a perfect boat for the 
lake, strong and safe, but trig and neat of 
outline. 

Hilary named it the “Surprise” at first 
sight, and Tom was sent for at once to paint 
the name in red letters to look well against 
the white background and to match the boat’s 
red trimmings. 

Its launching was an event. Some of the 
young people had boats over at the lake, 
rather weather-beaten, tubby affairs, Bell de- 
clared them, after the coming of the “Sur- 
prise.” A general overhauling took place 


180 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


immediately, the girls adopted simple boating 
dresses — red and white, which were their boat- 
ing colors. A new zest was given to the water 
picnics, Bedelia learning to know the lake 
road very well. 

August had come before they fairly realized 
that their summer was more than well under 
way. In little more than a month the long 
vacation would be over. Tom and Josie were 
to go to Boston to school; Bell to Vergennes. 

“There’ll never be another summer quite 
like it!” Hilary said one morning. “I can’t 
bear to think of its being over.” 

“It isn’t — yet,” Pauline answered. 

“Tom’s coming,” Patience heralded from 
the gate, and Hilary ran indoors for hat and 
camera. 

“Where are you off to this morning?” Pau- 
line asked, as her sister came out again. 

“Out by the Cross-roads’ Meeting-House,” 
Tom answered. “Hilary has designs on it, I 
believe.” 

“You’d better come, too, Paul,” Hilary 
urged. “It’s a glorious morning for a walk.” 

“I’m going to help mother cut out; perhaps 



Patience Looked Longingly After the Two 















































































' 

















































SNAP-SHOTS 


181 


I’ll come to meet you with Bedelia ’long 
towards noon. You wait at Meeting-House 
Hill.” 

Tm not going to be busy this morning,” 
Patience insinuated. 

“Oh, yes you are, young lady,” Pauline 
told her. “Mother said you were to weed the 
aster bed.” 

Patience looked longingly after the two 
starting gayly off down the path, their cameras 
swung over their shoulders, then she looked 
disgustedly at the aster bed. It was quite the 
biggest of the smaller beds. — She didn’t see 
what people wanted to plant so many asters 
for; she had never cared much for asters, she 
felt she should care even less about them in 
the future. Tiresome, stiff affairs! 

By the time Tom and Hilary reached the 
old Cross-Roads’ Meeting-House that morn- 
ing, after a long roundabout ramble, Hilary, 
for one, was quite willing to sit down and wait 
for Pauline and the trap, and eat the great, 
juicy blackberries Tom gathered for her from 
the bushes along the road. 

It had rained during the night and the air 


182 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


was crisp and fresh, with a hint of the coming 
fall. “Summer’s surely on the down grade,” 
Tom said, throwing himself on the bank be- 
side Hilary. 

“So Paul and I were lamenting this morn- 
ing. I don’t suppose it matters as much to 
you folks who are going off to school.” 

“Still it means another summer over,” Tom 
said soberly. He was rather sorry that it 
was so — there could never be another summer 
quite so jolly and carefree. “And the break- 
ing up of the club, I suppose?” 

“I don’t see why we need call it a break — 
just a discontinuance, for a time.” 

“And why that, even? There’ll be a lot 
of you left, to keep it going.” 

“Y-yes, but with three, or perhaps more, 
out, I reckon we’ll have to postpone the next 
installment until another summer.” 

Tom went off then for more berries, and 
Hilary sat leaning back against the trunk of 
the big tree crowning the top of Meeting- 
House Hill, her eyes rather thoughtful. 
From where she sat, she had a full view of both 
roads for some distance and, just beyond, the 


SNAP-SHOTS 183 

little hamlet scattered about the old meeting- 
house. 

Before the gate of one of the houses stood 
a familiar gig, and presently, as she sat watch- 
ing, Dr. Brice came down the narrow flower- 
bordered path, followed by a woman. At the 
gate both stopped; the woman was saying 
something, her anxious, drawn face seeming 
out of keeping with the cheery freshness of 
the morning and the flowers nodding their 
bright heads about her. 

As the doctor stood listening, his old shabby 
medicine case in his hand, with face bent to 
the troubled one raised to his, and bearing in- 
dicating grave sympathy and understanding, 
Hilary reached for her camera. 

“Upon my word! Isn't the poor pater 
exempt?” Tom laughed, coming back. 

“I want it for the book Josie and I are mak- 
ing for you to take away with you, ‘Winton 
Snap-shots.’ Well call it ‘The Country 
Doctor.’ ” 

Tom looked at the gig, moving slowly off 
down the road now. He hated to say so, but 
he wished Hilary would not put that particular 


184 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


snap-shot in. He had a foreboding that it 
was going to make him a bit uncomfortable 
— later — when the time for decision came; 
though, as for that, he had already decided — 
beyond thought of change. He wished that 
the pater hadn’t set his heart on his coming 
back here to practice — and he wished, too, 
that Hilary hadn’t taken that photo. 

“Paul’s late,” he said presently. 

“I’m afraid she isn’t coming.” 

“It’s past twelve,” Tom glanced at the sun. 
“Maybe we’d better walk on a bit.” 

But they had walked a considerable bit, all 
the way to the parsonage, in fact, before they 
saw anything of Pauline. There, she met 
them at the gate. “Have you seen any trace 
of Patience — and Bedelia?” she asked eagerly. 

“Patience and Bedelia?” Hilary repeated 
wonderingly. 

“They’re both missing, and it’s pretty safe 
guessing they’re together.” 

“But Patience would never dare — ” 

“Wouldn’t she!” Pauline exclaimed. “Jim 
brought Bedelia ’round about eleven and when 
I came out a few moments later, she was gone 


SNAP-SHOTS 


185 


and so was Patience. Jim’s out looking for 
them. We traced them as far as the Lake 
road.” 

“Fll go hunt, too,” Tom offered. “Don’t 
you worry, Paul; she’ll turn up all right — 
couldn’t down the Imp, if you tried.” 

“But she’s never driven Bedelia alone; and 
Bedelia’s not Fanny.” 

However, half an hour later, Patience 
drove calmly into the yard, Towser on the 
seat beside her, and if there was something 
very like anxiety in her glance, there was dis- 
tinct triumph in the way she carried her small, 
bare head. 

“We’ve had a beautiful drive!” she an- 
nounced, smiling pleasantly from her high 
seat, at the worried, indignant group on the 
porch. “I tell you, there isn’t any need to 
‘hi-yi’ this horse!” 

“My sakes!” Miranda declared. “Did you 
ever hear the beat of that!” 

“Get down, Patience!” Mrs. Shaw said, 
and Patience climbed obediently down. She 
bore the prompt banishment to her own room 
which followed, with seeming indifference. 


186 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


Certainly, it was not unexpected; but when 
Hilary brought her dinner up to her presently, 
she found her sitting on the floor, her head 
on the bed. It was only a few days now to 
Shirley’s turn and it was going to be such a 
nice turn. Patience felt that for once Pa- 
tience Shaw had certainly acted most un- 
wisely. 

“Patty, how could you!” Hilary put the 
tray on the table and sitting down on the bed, 
took the tumbled head on her knee. “We’ve 
been so worried! You see, Bedelia isn’t like 
Fanny!” 

“That’s why I wanted to get a chance to 
drive her by myself for once! She went 
beautifully! out on the Lake road I just let 
her loose!” For the moment, pride in her 
recent performance routed all contrition from 
Patience’s voice — “I tell you, folks I passed 
just stared!” 

“Patience, how — ” 

“I wasn’t scared the least bit; and, of 
course, Bedelia knew it. Uncle Jerry says 
they always know when you’re scared, and if 
Mr. Allen is the most up in history of any 


SNAP-SHOTS 187 

man in Vermont, Uncle Jerry is the most in 
horses.” 

Hilary felt that the conversation was hardly 
proceeding upon the lines her mother would 
have approved of, especially under present 
circumstances. “That has nothing to do with 
it, you know. Patience,” she said, striving to 
be properly severe. 

“I think it has — everything. I think it’s 
nice not being scared of things. You’re sort 
of timid ’bout things, aren’t you, Hilary?” 

Hilary made a movement to rise. 

“Oh, please,” Patience begged. “It’s go- 
ing to be such a dreadful long afternoon — all 
alone.” 

“But I can’t stay, mother would not 
want — ” 

“Just for a minute. I — I want to tell you 
something. I — coming back, I met Jane, 
and I gave her a lift home — and she did love 
it so — she says she’s never ridden before be- 
hind a horse that really went as if it enjoyed 
it as much as she did. That was some good 
out of being bad, wasn’t it? And — I told you 
— ever’n’ ever so long ago, that I was mighty 


188 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


sure Jane’d just be tickled to death to belong 
to our club. I think you might ask her — I 
don’t see why she shouldn’t like Seeing Win- 
ton, same’s we do — she doesn’t ever have fun 
— and she’ll be dead pretty soon. She’s get- 
ting along, Jane is — it’d make me mad’s any- 
thing to have to die ’fore I’d had any fun to 
speak of. Jane’s really very good company 
— when you draw her out — she just needs 
drawing out — Jane does. Seems to me, she 
remembers every funeral and wedding and 
everything — that’s ever taken place in Win- 
ton.” Patience stopped, sheer out of breath, 
but there was an oddly serious look on her lit- 
tle eager face. 

Hilary stroked back the tangled red curls. 
‘‘Maybe you’re right, Patty; maybe we have 
been selfish with our good times. I’ll have to 
go now, dear. You — I may tell mother — 
that you are sorry — truly, Patty?” 

Patience nodded. “But I reckon, it’s a 
good deal on account of Shirley’s turn,” she 
explained. 

Hilary bit her lip. 

“You don’t suppose you could fix that up' 


SNAP-SHOTS 


189 


with mother? You’re pretty good at fixing 
things up with mother, Hilary.” 

“Since how long?” Hilary laughed, but 
when she had closed the door, she opened it 
again to stick her head in. “I’ll try, Patty, 
at any rate,” she promised. 

She went down-stairs rather thoughtful. 
Mrs. Shaw was busy in the study and Pau- 
line had gone out on an errand. Hilary went 
up-stairs again, going to sit by one of the side 
windows in the “new room.” 

Over at the church, Sextoness Jane was 
making ready for the regular weekly prayer 
meeting; never a service was held in the 
church that she did not set all in order. 
Through one of the open windows, Hilary 
caught sight of the bunch of flowers on the 
reading-desk. Jane had brought them with 
her from home. Presently, the old woman 
herself came to the window to shake her dust- 
cloth, standing there a moment, leaning a lit- 
tle out, her eyes turned to the parsonage. 
Pauline was coming up the path, Shirley and 
Bell were with her. They were laughing and 
talking, the bright young voices making a 


190 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


pleasant break in the quiet of the garden. It 
seemed to Hilary, as if she could catch the 
wistful look in Jane’s faded eyes, a look only 
half consciously so, as if the old woman reached 
out vaguely for something that her own youth 
had been without and that only lately she had 
come to feel the lack of. 

A quick lump came into the girl’s throat. 
Life had seemed so bright and full of untried 
possibilities only that very morning, up there 
on Meeting-House Hill, with the wind in one’s 
face; and then had come that woman, follow- 
ing the doctor down from the path. Life 
was surely anything but bright for her this 
crisp August day — and now here was Jane. 
And presently — at the moment it seemed very 
near indeed to Hilary — she and Paul and all 
of them would be old and, perhaps, unhappy. 
And then it would be good to remember — that 
they had tried to share the fun and laughter of 
this summer of theirs with others. 

Hilary thought of the piece of old tapestry 
hanging on the studio wall over at the manor 
— of the interwoven threads — the dark as nec- 
essary to the pattern as the bright. Per- 


SNAP-SHOTS 


191 


haps they had need of Sextoness Jane, of the 
interweaving of her life into theirs — of the 
interweaving of all the village lives going on 
about them — quite as much as those more 
sober lives needed the brightening touch of 
theirs. 

“Hilary! O Hilary!” Pauline called. 

“I’m coming,” Hilary answered, and went 
slowly down to where the others were waiting 
on the porch. 

“Has anything happened?” Pauline asked. 

“I’ve been having a think — and IVe come 
to the conclusion that we’re a selfish, self-ab- 
sorbed set.” 

“Mother Shaw!” Pauline went to the study 
window, “please come out here. Hilary’s 
calling us names, and that isn’t polite.” 

Mrs. Shaw came. “I hope not very bad 
names,” she said. 

Hilary swung slowly back and forth in the 
hammock. “I didn’t mean it that way — it’s 
only — ” She told what Patience had said 
about Jane’s joining the club, and then, 
rather reluctantly, a little of what she had 
been thinking. 


192 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“I think Hilary’s right,” Shirley declared. 
“Let’s form a deputation and go right over 
and ask the poor old soul to join here and 
now.” 

“I would never’ve thought of it,” Bell said. 
“But I don’t suppose I’ve ever given Jane a 
thought, anyway.” 

“Patty’s mighty cute — for all she’s such a 
terror at times,” Pauline admitted. “She 
knows a lot about the people here — and it’s 
just because she’s interested in them.” 

“Come on,” Shirley said, jumping up. 
“We’re going to have another honorary mem- 
ber.” 

“I think it would be kind, girls,” Mrs. Shaw 
said gravely. “Jane will feel herself im- 
mensely flattered, and I know of no one who 
upholds the honor of Winton more honestly 
or persistently.” 

“And please, Mrs. Shaw,” Shirley coaxed, 
“when we come back, mayn’t Patience Shaw, 
H. M., come down and have tea with us?” 

“I hardly think—” 

“Please, Mother Shaw,” Hilary broke in; 
“after all — she started this, you know. That 


SNAP-SHOTS 193 

sort of counterbalances the other, doesn’t 
it?” 

“Well, we’ll see,” her mother laughed. 

Pauline ran to get one of the extra badges 
with which Shirley had provided her, and 
then the four girls went across to the church. 

Sextoness Jane was just locking the back 
door — not the least important part of the af- 
ternoon’s duties with her — as they came 
through the opening in the hedge. “Good af- 
ternoon,” she said cheerily, “was you wanting 
to go inside?” 

“No,” Pauline answered, “we came over to 
invite you to join our club. We thought, 
maybe, you’d like to?” 

“My Land!” Jane stared from one to an- 
other of them. “And wear one of them blue- 
ribbon affairs?” 

“Yes, indeed,” Shirley laughed. “See, 
here it is,” and she pointed to the one in Pau- 
line’s hand. 

Sextoness Jane came down the steps. 
“Me, I ain’t never wore a badge! Not once 
in all my life! Oncet, when I was a little 
youngster, ’most like Patience, teacher, she 


194 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


got up some sort of May doings. We was all 
to wear white dresses and red, white and blue 
ribbons — very night before, I come down with 
the mumps. Looks like I always come down 
when I ought to’ve stayed up!” 

“But you won’t come down with anything 
this time,” Pauline pinned the blue badge on 
the waist of Jane’s black and white calico. 
“Now you’re an honorary member of ‘The S. 
W. F. Club.’ ” 

Jane passed a hand over it softly. “My 
Land!” was all she could say. 

She was still stroking it softly as she walked 
slowly away towards home. My, wouldn’t 
Tobias be interested! 


CHAPTER IX 
AT THE MANOR 




CHAPTER IX 

AT THE MANOR 

“ ‘All the names I know from nurse: 

Gardener’s garters, Shepherd’s purse, 
Bachelor’s buttons, Lady’s smock, 

And the Lady Hollyhock,’ ” 

Patience chanted, moving slowly about the 
parsonage garden, hands full of flowers, and 
the big basket, lying on the grass beyond, 
almost full. 

Behind her, now running at full speed, now 
stopping suddenly, back lifted, tail erect, came 
Lucky, the black kitten from The Maples. 
Lucky had been an inmate of the parsonage 
for some weeks now and was thriving famously 
in her adopted home. Towser tolerated her 
with the indifference due such a small, insig- 
nificant creature, and she alternately bullied 
and patronized Towser. 

“We haven’t shepherd’s purse, nor lady’s 


198 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


smock, that I know of, Lucky,” Patience said, 
glancing back at the kitten, at that moment 
threatening battle at a polite nodding Sweet 
William, “but you can see for yourself that 
we have hollyhocks, while as for bachelor’s 
buttons! Just look at that big, blue bunch 
in one comer of the basket.” 

It was the morning of the day of Shirley’s 
turn and Pauline was hurrying to get ready 
to go over and help decorate the manor. She 
was singing, too; from the open windows of 
the “new room” came the words — 

“ ‘A cheerful world? — It surely is 
And if you understand your biz 
You’ll taboo the worry worm, 

And cultivate the happy germ,’ ” 

To which piece of good advice, Patience 
promptly whistled back the gay refrain. 

On the back porch, Sextoness Jane — called 
in for an extra half-day— was ironing the 
white dresses to be worn that afternoon. And 
presently, Patience, her basket quite full and 
stowed away in the trap waiting before the 
side door, strolled around to interview her. 


AT THE MANOR 199 

“I suppose you’re going this afternoon?” 
she asked. 

Jane looked up from waxing her iron. 
“Well, I was sort of calculating on going over 
for a bit; Miss Shirley having laid particular 
stress on my coming and this being the first 
reg’lar doings since I joined the club. I told 
her and Pauline they mustn’t look for me to 
go junketing ’round with them all the while, 
seeing I’m in office — so to speak — and my time 
pretty well taken up with my work. I reckon 
you’re going?” 

“I — ” Patience edged nearer the porch. 
Behind Jane stood the tall clothes-horse, with 
its burden of freshly ironed white things. 
At sight of a short, white frock, very crisp 
and immaculate, the blood rushed to the child’s 
face, then as quickly receded. — After all, it 
would have had to be ironed for Sunday and 
— well, mother certainly had been very non- 
committal the past few days — ever since that 
escapade with Bedelia, in fact — regarding her 
youngest daughter’s hopes and fears for this 
all-important afternoon. And Patience had 
been wise enough not to press the matter. 


200 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“But, oh, I do wonder if Hilary has — ” Pa- 
tience went back to the side porch. Hilary 
was there talking to Bedelia. “You — you 
have fixed it up?” the child inquired anx- 
iously. 

Hilary looked gravely unconscious. 
“Fixed it up?” she repeated. 

“About this afternoon — with mother?” 

“Oh, yes! Mother’s going; so is father.” 

Patience repressed a sudden desire to 
stamp her foot, and Hilary, seeing the real 
doubt and longing in her face, relented. 
“Mother wants to see you, Patty. I rather 
think there are to be conditions.” 

Patience darted off. From the doorway, 
she looked back — “I just knew you wouldn’t 
go back on me, Hilary! I’ll love you for- 
ever’n’ ever.” 

Pauline came out a moment later, drawing 
on her driving gloves. “I feel like a story- 
book girl, going driving this time in the morn- 
ing, in a trap like this. I wish you were com- 
ing, too, Hilary.” 

“Oh, I’m like the delicate story-book girl, 
who has to rest, so as to be ready for the dis- 


AT THE MANOR 


201 


sipations that are to come later. I look the 
part, don’t I?” 

Pauline looked down into the laughing, sun- 
browned face. “If Uncle Paul were to see 
you now, he might find it hard to believe I 
hadn’t — exaggerated that time.” 

“Well, it’s your fault — and his, or was, in 
the beginning. You’ve a fine basket of 
flowers to take; Patience has done herself 
proud this morning.” 

“It’s wonderful how well that young lady 
can behave — at times.” 

“Oh, she’s young yet! When I hear 
mother tell how like her you used to be, I don’t 
feel too discouraged about Patty.” 

“That strikes me as rather a double-edged 
sort of speech,” Pauline gathered up the 
reins. “Good-by, and don’t get too tired.” 

Shirley’s turn was to be a combination 
studio tea and lawn-party, to which all club 
members, both regular and honorary, not to 
mention their relatives and friends, had been 
bidden. Following this, was to be a high tea 
for the regular members. 

“That’s Senior’s share,” Shirley had ex- 


202 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


plained to Pauline. “He insists that it’s up 
to him to do something.” 

Mr. Dayre was on very good terms with 
the “S. W. F. Club.” As for Shirley, after 
the first, no one had ever thought of her as an 
outsider. 

It was hard now, Pauline thought, as she 
drove briskly along, the lake breeze in her 
face, and the sound of Bedelia’s quick trotting 
forming a pleasant accompaniment to her 
thoughts, very hard, to realize how soon the 
summer would be over. But perhaps — as 
Hilary said — next summer would mean the 
taking up again of this year’s good times and 
interests, — Shirley talked of coming back. 
As for the winter — Pauline had in mind sev- 
eral plans for the winter. Those of the club 
members to stay behind must get together 
some day and talk them over. One thing was 
certain, the club motto must be lived up to 
bravely. If not in one way, why in another. 
There must be no slipping back into the old 
dreary rut and routine. It lay with them- 
selves as to what their winter should be. 

“And there’s fine sleighing here, Bedelia,” 


AT THE MANOR 


203 


she said. “We’ll get the old cutter out and 
give it a coat of paint.” 

Bedelia tossed her head, as if she heard in 
imagination the gay jingling of the sleigh- 
bells. 

“But, in the meantime, here is the manor,” 
Pauline laughed, “and it’s the prettiest 
August day that ever was, and lawn-parties 
and such festivities are afoot, not sleighing 
parties.” 

The manor stood facing the lake with its 
back to the road, a broad sloping lawn sur- 
rounded it on three sides, with the garden at 
the back. 

For so many seasons, it had stood lonely and 
neglected, that Pauline never came near it 
now, without rejoicing afresh in its altered 
aspect. Even the sight of Betsy Todd’s dish 
towels, drying on the currant bushes at one 
side of the back door, added their touch to the 
sense of pleasant, homely life that seemed to 
envelop the old house nowadays. 

Shirley came to the gate, as Pauline drew 
up, Phil, Pat and Pudgey in close attention. 
“I have to keep an eye on them,” she told Pau- 


204 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


line. “They’ve just had their baths, and 
they’re simply wild to get out in the middle 
of the road and roll. I’ve told them no self- 
respecting dog would wish to come to a lawn- 
party in anything but the freshest of white 
coats, but I’m afraid they’re not very self-re- 
specting.” 

“Patience is sure Towser’s heart is heavy 
because he is not to come; she has promised 
him a lawn-party on his own account, and that 
no grown-ups shall be invited. She’s sent 
you the promised flowers, and hinted — more 
or less plainly — that she would have been 
quite willing to deliver them in person.” 

“Why didn’t you bring her? Oh, but I’m 
afraid you’ve robbed yourself!” 

“Oh, no, we haven’t. Mother says, flowers 
grow with picking.” 

“Come on around front,” Shirley sug- 
gested. “The boys have been putting the 
awning up.” 

“The boys” were three of Mr. Dayre’s fel- 
low artists, who had come up a day or two be- 
fore, on a visit to the manor. One of them, 
at any rate, deserved Shirley’s title. He 


AT THE MANOR 


205 


came forward now. “Looks pretty nice, 
doesn’t it?” he said, with a wave of the hand 
towards the red and white striped awning, 
placed at the further edge of the lawn. 

Shirley smiled her approval, and introduced 
him to Pauline, adding that Miss Shaw was 
the real founder of their club. 

“It’s a might jolly sort of club, too,” young 
Oram said. 

“That is exactly what it has turned out to 
be,” Pauline laughed. “Are the vases ready, 
Shirley?” 

Shirley brought the tray of empty flower 
vases out on the veranda, and sent Harry 
Oram for a bucket of fresh water. “Harry is 
to make the salad,” she explained to Pauline, 
as he came back. “Before he leaves the 
manor he will have developed into a fairly 
useful member of society.” 

“You’ve never eaten one of my salads, Miss 
Shaw,” Harry said. “When you have, 
you’ll think all your previous life an empty 
dream.” 

“It’s much more likely her later life will 
prove a nightmare, — for a while, at least,” 


206 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


Shirley declared. “Still, Paul, Harry does 
make them rather well. Betsy Todd, I am 
sorry to say, doesn’t approve of him. But 
there are so many persons and things she 
doesn’t approve of; lawn-parties among the 
latter.” 

Pauline nodded sympathetically; she knew 
Betsy Todd of old. Her wonder was, that 
the Dayres had been able to put up with her 
so long, and she said so. 

“ ‘Hobson’s choice,’ ” Shirley answered, with 
a little shrug. “She isn’t much like our old 
Therese at home, is she, Harry? But noth- 
ing would tempt Therese away from her be- 
loved New York. ‘Vairmon! Nevaire have 
I heard of zat place!’ she told Harry, when 
he interviewed her for us. Senior’s gone to 
Vergennes — on business thoughts intent, or I 
hope they are. He’s under strict orders not 
to ‘discover a single bit’ along the way, and 
to get back as quickly as possible.” 

“You see how beautifully she has us all in 
training?” Harry said to Pauline. 

Pauline laughed. Suddenly she looked up 
from her flowers with sobered face. “I won- 


AT THE MANOR 


207 


der,” she said slowly, “if you know what it’s 
meant to us — you’re being here this summer, 
Shirley? Sometimes things do fit in just 
right after all. It’s helped out wonderfully 
this summer, having you here and the manor 
open.” 

“Pauline has a fairy-story uncle down in 
New York,” Shirley turned to Harry. 
“You’ve heard of him — Mr. Paul Shaw.” 

“Well, — rather! I’ve met him, once or 
twice — he didn’t strike me as much of a be- 
liever in fairy tales.” 

“He’s made us believe in them,” Pauline 
answered. 

“I think Senior might have provided me 
with such a delightful sort of uncle,” Shirley 
observed. “I told him so, but he says, while 
he’s awfully sorry I didn’t mention it before, 
he’s afraid it’s too late now.” 

“Uncle Paul sent us Bedelia,” Pauline told 
the rather perplexed-looking Harry, “and 
the row-boat and the camera and — oh, other 
things.” 

“Because he wanted them to have a nice, 
jolly summer,” Shirley explained. “Pau- 


208 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


line’s sister had been sick and needed bright- 
ening up.” 

“You don’t think he’s looking around for 
a nephew to adopt, do you?” Harry in- 
quired. “A well-intentioned, intelligent 
young man — with no end of talent.” 

“For making salads,” Shirley added with a 
sly smile. 

“Oh, well, you know,” Harry remarked 
casually, “these are what Senior calls my 
‘salad days.’ ” 

Whereupon Shirley rose without a word, 
carrying off her vases of flowers. 

The party at the manor was, like all the club 
affairs, a decided success. Never had the old 
place looked so gay and animated, since those 
far-off days of its early glory. 

The young people coming and going — the 
girls in their light dresses and bright ribbons 
made a pleasant place of the lawn, with its 
background of shining water. The tennis 
court, at one side of the house, was one of the 
favorite gathering spots; there were one or 
two boats out on the lake. The pleasant in- 


AT THE MANOR 209 

formality of the whole affair proved its great- 
est charm. 

Mr. Allen was there, pointing out to his 
host the supposed end of the subterranean 
passage said to connect the point on which the 
manor stood with the old ruined French fort 
over on the New York side. The minister 
was having a quiet chat with the doctor, who 
had made a special point of being there. 
Mothers of club members were exchanging 
notes and congratulating each other on the 
good comradeship and general air of content- 
ment among the young people. Sextoness 
Jane was there, in all the glory of her best 
dress — one of Mrs. Shaw’s handed-down 
summer ones — and with any amount of items 
picked up to carry home to Tobias, who was 
certain to expect a full account of this most 
unusual dissipation on his mistress’s part. 
Even Betsy Todd condescended to put on her 
black woolen — usually reserved for church 
and funerals — and walk about among the 
other guests ; but always, with an air that told 
plainly how little she approved of such goings 
on. The Boyds were there, their badges in 


210 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


full evidence. And last, though far from 
least, in her own estimation. Patience was 
there, very crisp and white and on her best 
behavior, — for, setting aside those conditions 
mother had seen fit to burden- her with, was 
the delightful fact that Shirley had asked her 
to help serve tea. 

The principal tea-table was in the studio, 
though there was a second one, presided over 
by Pauline and Bell, out under the awning at 
the edge of the lawn. 

Patience thought the studio the very nicest 
room she had ever been in. It was long and 
low — in reality, the old dancing-hall, for the 
manor had been built after the pattern of its 
first owner’s English home; and in the deep, 
recessed windows, facing the lake, many a be- 
patched and powdered little belle of Colonial 
days had coquetted across her fan with her 
bravely-clad partner. 

Mr. Dayre had thrown out an extra win- 
dow at one end, at right angles to the great 
stone fireplace, banked to-day with golden 
rod, thereby securing the desired north light. 

On the easel, stood a nearly finished paint- 


AT THE MANOR 


211 


ing, — a sunny corner of the old manor kitchen, 
with Betsy Todd in lilac print gown, peeling 
apples by the open window, through which 
one caught a glimpse of the tall hollyhocks 
in the garden beyond. 

Before this portrait, Patience found Sex- 
toness J ane standing in mute astonishment. 

“Betsy looks like she was just going to say 
— 'take your hands out of the dish!’ doesn’t 
she?” Patience commented. Betsy had once 
helped out at the parsonage, during a brief 
illness of Miranda’s, and the young lady knew 
whereof she spoke. 

“I’d never’ ve thought,” Jane said slowly, 
“that anyone’d get that fond of Sister Todd 
—as to want a picture of her!” 

“Oh, it’s because she’s such a character, 
you know,” Patience explained serenely. 
Jane was so good about letting one explain 
things. “ ‘A perfect character,’ I heard one 
of those artist men say so.” 

Jane shook her head dubiously. “Not 
what I’d call a ‘perfect’ character — not that 
I’ve got anything against Sister Todd; but 
she’s too fond of finding out a body’s faults.” 


212 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


Patience went off then in search of empty 
tea-cups. She was having a beautiful time; 
at present only one cloud overshadowed her 
horizon. Already some tiresome folks were 
beginning to think about going. There was 
the talk of chores to be done, suppers to get, 
and with the breaking up, must come an end 
to her share in the party. For mother, 
though approached in the most delicate fash- 
ion, had proved obdurate regarding the 
further festivity to follow. Had mother 
been willing to consider the matter, Patience 
would have cheerfully undertaken to procure 
the necessary invitation. Shirley was a very 
obliging girl. 

“And really, my dears,” she said, address- 
ing the three P’s collectively, “it does seem a 
pity to have to go home before the fun’s all 
over. And I could manage it — Bob would 
take me out rowing — if I coaxed — he rows 
very slowly. I don’t suppose, for one mo- 
ment, that we would get back in time. I be- 
lieve — ” For fully three minutes, Patience 
sat quite still in one of the studio window 
seats, oblivious of the chatter going on all 


AT THE MANOR 


213 


about her ; then into her blue eyes came a look 
not seen there very often — “No,” she said 
sternly, shaking her head at Phil, much to his 
surprise, for he wasn’t doing anything. “No 
— it wouldn’t be square — and there would be 
the most awful to-do afterwards.” 

When a moment or two later, Mrs. Shaw 
called to her to come, that father was waiting, 
Patience responded with a very good grace. 
But Mr. Dayre caught the wistful look in 
the child’s face. “Bless me,” he said heartily. 
“You’re not going to take Patience home 
with you, Mrs. Shaw? Let her stay for the 
tea — the young people won’t keep late hours, 
I assure you.” 

“But I think — ” Mrs. Shaw began very 
soberly. 

“Sometimes, I find it quite as well not to 
think things over,” Mr. Dayre suggested. 
“Why, dear me, I’d quite counted on Pa- 
tience’s being here. You see, I’m not a 
regular member, either; and I want someone 
to keep me in countenance.” 

So presently, Hilary felt a hand slipped 
eagerly into hers. “I’m staying! I’m stay- 


214 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


ing!” an excited little voice announced. “And 
oh, I just love Mr. Dayre!” 

Then Patience went back to her window 
seat to play the delightful game of “making 
believe” she hadn’t stayed. She imagined 
that instead, she was sitting between father 
and mother in the gig, bubbling over with the 
.^desire to “hi-yi” at Fanny, picking her slow 
way along. 

The studio was empty, even the dogs were 
outside, speeding the parting guests with 
more zeal than discretion. But after awhile 
Harry Oram strolled in. 

“I’m staying!” Patience announced. She 
approved of Harry. “You’re an artist, too, 
aren’t you?” she remarked. 

“So kind of you to say so,” Harry mur- 
mured. “I have heard grave doubts ex- 
pressed on the, subject by my too impartial 
friends.” 

“I mean to be one when I grow up,” Pa- 
tience told him, “so’s I can have a room like 
this — with just rugs on the floor; rugs slide 
so nicely — and window seats and things all 
cluttery.” 


AT THE MANOR 


215 


“May I come and have tea with you? I’d 
like it awfully.” 

“It’ll be really tea — not pretend kind,” Pa- 
tience said. “But I’ll have that sort for any 
children who may come. Hilary takes pic- 
tures — she doesn’t make them though. Made 
pictures are nicer, aren’t they?” 

“Some of them.” Harry glanced through 
the open doorway, to where Hilary sat rest- 
ing. She was “making” a picture now, he 
thought to himself, in her white dress, under 
the big tree, her pretty hair forming a frame 
about her thoughtful face. Taking a port- 
folio from a table near by, he went out to 
where Hilary sat. 

“Your small sister says you take pictures,” 
he said, drawing a chair up beside hers, “so I 
thought perhaps you’d let me show you these 
— they were taken by a friend of mine.” 

“Oh, but mine aren’t anything like these! 
These are beautiful!” Hilary bent over the 
photographs he handed her; marveling over 
their soft tones. They were mostly bits of 
landscape, with here and there a water view 
and one or two fleecy cloud effects. It hardly 


216 THE S. W. F. CLUB 

seemed as though they could be really photo- 
graphs. 

“Fve never done anything like these!” she 
said regretfully. “I wish I could — there are 
some beautiful views about here that would 
make charming pictures.” 

“She didn’t in the beginning,” Harry said. 
“She’s lame; it was an accident, but she can 
never be quite well again, so she took this up, 
as an amusement at first, but now it’s going 
to be her profession.” 

Hilary bent over the photographs again. 
“And you really think — anyone could learn 
to do it?” 

“No, not anyone; but I don’t see why the 
right sort of person couldn’t.” 

wonder — if I could develop into the right 
sort.” 

“May I come and see what you have done 
— and talk it over?” Harry asked. “Since 
this friend of mine took it up, I’m ever so 
interested in camera work.” 

“Indeed you may,” Hilary answered. She 
had never thought of her camera holding such 
possibilities within it, of it’s growing into 


AT THE MANOR 217 

something better and more satisfying than a 
mere playmate of the moment. 

“Rested?” Pauline asked, coming up. 
“Supper’s nearly ready.” 

“I wasn’t very tired. Paul, come and look 
at these.” 

Supper was served on the lawn; the pleas- 
antest, most informal, of affairs, the presence 
of the older members of the party serving to 
turn the gay give and take of the young folks 
into deeper and wider channels, and Shirley’s 
frequent though involuntary — “Do you re- 
member, Senior?” calling out more than one 
vivid bit of travel, of description of places, 
known to most of them only through books. 

Later, down on the lower end of the lawn, 
with the moon making a path of silver along 
the water, and the soft hush of the summer 
night over everything, Shirley brought out 
her guitar, singing for them strange folk- 
songs, picked up in her rambles with her fa- 
ther. Afterwards, the whole party sang 
songs that they all knew, ending up at last 
with the club song. 

“ ‘It’s a habit to be happy,’ ” the fresh 


218 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


young voices chorused, sending the tune far 
out across the lake; and presently, from a 
boat on its further side, it was whistled back 
to them. 

“Who is it, I wonder?” Edna said. 

“Give it up,” Tom answered. “Some- 
one who’s heard it — there’ve been plenty of 
opportunities for folks to hear it.” 

“Well it isn’t a bad gospel to scatter broad- 
cast,” Bob remarked. 

“And maybe it’s someone who doesn’t live 
about here, and he will go away taking our 
tune with him, for other people to catch up,” 
Hilary suggested. 

“But if he only has the tune and not the 
words,” Josie objected, “what use will that 
be?” 

“The spirit of the words is in the tune,” 
Pauline said. “No one could whistle or sing 
it and stay grumpy.” 

“They’d have to ‘put the frown away 
awhile, and try a little sunny smile,’ wouldn’t 
they?” Patience observed. 

Patience had been a model of behavior all 
the evening. Mother would be sure to ask 


AT THE MANOR 


219 


if she had been good, when they got home. 
That was one of those aggravating questions 
that only time could relieve her from. No 
one ever asked Paul, or Hilary, that — when 
they’d been anywhere. 

As Mr. Dayre had promised, the party 
broke up early, going off in the various rigs 
they had come in. Tom and Josie went in 
the trap with the Shaws. “It’s been perfectly 
lovely — all of it,” Josie said, looking back 
along the road they were leaving. “Every 
good time we have seems the best one yet.” 

“You wait ’til my turn comes,” Pauline 
told her. “I’ve such a scheme in my head.” 

“Am I in it?” Patience begged. She was 
in front, between Tom, who was driving, and 
Hilary, then she leaned forward, they were 
nearly home, and the lights of the parsonage 
showed through the trees. “There’s a light 
in the parlor — there’s company!” 

Pauline looked, too. “And one up in our 
old room, Hilary. Goodness, it must be a 
visiting minister! I didn’t know father was 
expecting anyone.” 

“I bet you!” Patience jumped excitedly up 


220 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


and down. “I just bet it isn’t any visiting 
minister — but a visiting — uncle! I feel it in 
my bones, as Miranda says.” 

“Nonsense!” Pauline declared. 

“Maybe it isn’t nonsense, Paul!” Hilary 
said. 

“I feel it in my bones,” Patience repeated. 
“I just knew Uncle Paul would come up — a 
story-book uncle would be sure to.” 

“Well, here we are,” Tom laughed. 
“You’ll know for certain pretty quick.” 


CHAPTER X 


THE END OF SUMMER 

















' 

























































































■ 




’ 







CHAPTER X 


THE END OE SUMMER 

It was Uncle Paul, and perhaps no one 
was more surprised at his unexpected coming, 
than he himself. 

That snap-shot of Hilary’s had considerable 
to do with it; bringing home to him the sud- 
den realization of the passing of the years. 
For the first time, he had allowed himself to 
face the fact that it was some time now since 
he had crossed the summit of the hill, and that 
under present conditions, his old age promised 
to be a lonely, cheerless affair. 

He had never had much to do with young 
people; but, all at once, it seemed to him that 
it might prove worth his while to cultivate 
the closer acquaintance of these nieces of his. 
Pauline, in particular, struck him as likely to 
improve upon a nearer acquaintance. And 
that afternoon, as he rode up Broadway, he 


224 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


found himself wondering how she would en- 
joy the ride; and all the sights and wonders 
of the great city. 

Later, over his solitary dinner, he suddenly 
decided to run up to Winton the next day. 
He would not wire them, he would rather like 
to take Phil by surprise. 

So he had arrived at the parsonage, driv- 
ing up in Jed’s solitary hack, and much plied 
with information, general and personal, on the 
way, just as the minister and his wife reached 
home from the manor. 

“And, oh, my! Doesn’t father look 
tickled to death!” Patience declared, coming 
in to her sisters’ room that night, ostensibly 
to have an obstinate knot untied, but inwardly 
determined to make a third at the usual bed- 
time talk for that once, at least. It wasn’t 
often they all came up together. 

“He looks mighty glad,” Pauline said. 

“And isn’t it funny, hearing him called 
Phil?” Patience curled herself up in the 
cozy corner. “I never’ve thought of father 
as Phil.” 

Hilary paused in the braiding of her long 


THE END OF SUMMER 225 


hair. “I’m glad we’ve got to know him — 
Uncle Paul, I mean — through his letters, and 
all the lovely things he’s done for us; else, I 
think I’d have been very much afraid of 
him.” 

“So am I,” Pauline assented. “I see now 
what Mr. Oram meant — he doesn’t look as if 
he believed much in fairy stories. But I like 
his looks — he’s so nice and tall and straight.” 

“He used to have red hair, before it turned 
gray,” Hilary said, “so that must be a family 
trait; your chin’s like his, Paul, too, — so 
square and determined.” 

“Is mine?” Patience demanded. 

“You cut to bed, youngster,” Pauline com- 
manded. “You’re losing all your beauty 
sleep; and really, you know — ” 

Patience went to stand before the mirror. 
“Maybe I ain’t — pretty — yet; but I’m going 
to be — some day. Mr. Dayre says he likes 
red hair, I asked him. He says for me not to 
worry; I’ll have them all sitting up and tak- 
ing notice yet.” 

At which Pauline bore promptly down 
upon her, escorting her in person to the door 


226 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


of her own room. “And you’d better get to 
bed pretty quickly, too, Hilary,” she advised, 
coming back. “You’ve had enough excite- 
ment for one day.” 

Mr. Paul Shaw stayed a week; it was a 
busy week for the parsonage folk and for 
some other people besides. Before it was 
over, the story-book uncle had come to know 
his nieces and Winton fairly thoroughly; 
while they, on their side, had grown very well 
acquainted with the tall, rather silent man, 
who had a fashion of suggesting the most de- 
lightful things to do in the most matter-of- 
fact manner. 

There w r ere one or two trips decidedly out- 
side that ten-mile limit, including an all day 
sail up the lake, stopping for the night at a 
hotel on the New York shore and returning 
by the next day’s boat. There was a visit to 
Yergennes, which took in a round of the shops, 
a concert, and another night away from home. 

“Was there ever such a week!” Hilary 
sighed blissfully one morning, as she and her 
uncle waited on the porch for Bedelia and 



“Was There Ever Such a Week!” 













THE END OF SUMMER 227 


the trap. Hilary was to drive him over to 
The Maples for dinner. 

“Or such a summer altogether,” Pauline 
added, from just inside the study window. 

“Then Winton has possibilities?” Mr. 
Shaw asked. 

“I should think it has; we ought to be 
eternally grateful to you for making us find 
them out,” Pauline declared. 

Mr. Shaw smiled, more as if to himself. “I 
daresay they’re not all exhausted yet.” 

“Perhaps,” Hilary said slowly, “some 
places are like some people, the longer and 
better you know them, the more you keep 
finding out in them to like.” 

“Father says,” Pauline suggested, “that one 
finds, as a rule, what one is looking for.” 

“Here we are,” her uncle exclaimed, as Pa- 
tience appeared, driving Bedelia. “Do you 
know,” he said, as he and Hilary turned out 
into the wide village street, “I haven’t seen the 
schoolhouse yet?” 

“We can go around that way. It isn’t 
much of a building,” Hilary answered. 

“I suppose it serves its purpose.” 


228 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“It is said to be a very good school for the 
size of the place.” Hilary turned Bedelia 
up the little by-road, leading to the old 
weather-beaten schoolhouse, standing back 
from the road in an open space of bare 
ground. 

“You and Pauline are through here?” her 
uncle asked. 

“Paul is. I would’ve been this June, if I 
hadn’t broken down last winter.” 

“You will be able to go on this fall?” 

“Yes, indeed. Dr. Brice said so the other 
day. He says, if all his patients got on so 
well, by not following his advice, he’d have 
to shut up shop, but that, fortunately for 
him, they haven’t all got a wise uncle down in 
New York, to offer counter-advice.” 

“Each in his turn,” Mr. Shaw remarked, 
adding, “and Pauline considers herself through 
school?” 

“I — I suppose so. I know she would like 
to go on — but we’ve no higher school here and 
— She read last winter, quite a little, with fa- 
ther. Pauline’s ever so clever.” 

“Supposing you both had an opportunity — 


THE END OF SUMMER 229 


for it must be both, or neither, I judge — and 
the powers that be consented — how about go- 
ing away to school this winter?” 

Hilary dropped the reins. “Oh!” she 
cried, “you mean — ” 

“I have a trick of meaning what I say,” her 
uncle said, smiling at her. 

“I wish I could say — what I want to — and 
can’t find words for — ” Hilary said. 

“We haven’t consulted the higher authori- 
ties yet, you know.” 

“And — Oh, I don’t see how mother could 
get on without us, even if — ” 

“Mothers have a knack at getting along 
without a good many things — when it means 
helping their young folks on a bit,” Mr. 
Shaw remarked. “I’ll have a talk with her 
and your father to-night.” 

That evening, pacing up and down the 
front veranda with his brother, Mr. Shaw 
said, with his customary abruptness, “You 
seem to have fitted in here, Phil, — perhaps, you 
were in the right of it, after all. I take it 
you haven’t had such a hard time, in some 
ways.” 


230 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


The minister did not answer immediately. 
Looking back nearly twenty years, he told 
himself, that he did not regret that early 
choice of his. He had fitted into the life here; 
he and his people had grown together. It had 
not always been smooth sailing and more than 
once, especially the past year or so, his nar- 
row means had pressed him sorely, but on the 
whole, he had found his lines cast in a pleas- 
ant place, and was not disposed to rebel 
against his heritage. 

“Yes,” he said, at last, “I have fitted in; 
too easily, perhaps. I never was ambitious, 
you know.” 

“Except in the accumulating of books,” his 
brother suggested. 

The minister smiled. “I have not been 
able to give unlimited rein even to that mild 
ambition. Fortunately, the rarer the op- 
portunity, the greater the pleasure it brings 
with it — and the old books never lose their 
charm.” 

Mr. Paul Shaw flicked the ashes from his 
cigar. “And the girls — you expect them to 
fit in, too?” 


THE END OF SUMMER 231 


“It is their home.” A note the elder 
brother knew of old sounded in the younger 
man’s voice. 

“Don’t mount your high horse just yet, 
Phil,” he said. “I’m not going to rub you up 
the wrong way — at least, I don’t mean to ; but 
you were always an uncommonly hard chap to 
handle — in some matters. I grant you, it is 
their home and not a bad sort of home for a 
girl to grow up in.” Mr. Shaw stood for a 
moment at the head of the steps, looking off 
down the peaceful, shadowy street. It had 
been a pleasant week; he had enjoyed it won- 
derfully. He meant to have many more such. 
But to live here always! Already the city 
was calling to him; he was homesick for its 
rush and bustle, the sense of life and move- 
ment. 

“You and I stand as far apart to-day, in 
some matters, Phil, as we did twenty — thirty 
years ago,” he said presently, “and that eldest 
daughter of yours — I’m a fair hand at reading 
character or I shouldn’t be where I am to-day, 
if I were not — is more like me than you.” 

“So I have come to think — lately.” 


232 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“That second girl takes after you; she 
would never have written that letter to me 
last May.” 

“No, Hilary would not have at the time — ” 

“Oh, I can guess how you felt about it at 
the time. But, look here, Phil, you’ve got 
over that — surely? After all, I like to think 
now that Pauline only hurried on the inevit- 
able.” Mr. Paul Shaw laid his hand on the 
minister’s shoulder. “Nearly twenty years is 
a pretty big piece out of a lifetime. I see now 
how much I have been losing all these years.” 

“It has been a long time, Paul; and, per- 
haps, I have been to blame in not trying more 
persistently to heal the breach between us. I 
assure you that I have regretted it daily.” 

“You always did have a lot more pride in 
your make-up than a man of your profession 
has any right to allow himself, Phil. But if 
you like, I’m prepared to point out to you 
right now how you can make it up to me. 
Here comes Lady Shaw and we won’t 
waste time getting to business.” 

That night, as Pauline and Hilary were in 
their own room, busily discussing, for by no 


THE END OF SUMMER 233 


means the first time that day, what Uncle Paul 
had said to Hilary that morning, and just 
how he had looked, when he said it, and was 
it at all possible that father would consent, 
and so on, ad libitum , their mother tapped at 
the door. 

Pauline ran to open it. “Good news, or 
not?” she demanded. “Yes, or no, Mother 
Shaw?” 

“That is how you take it,” Mrs. Shaw an- 
swered. She was glad, very glad, that this 
unforeseen opportunity should be given her 
daughters; and yet — it meant the first break 
in the home circle, the first leaving home for 
them. 

Mr. Paul Shaw left the next morning. 
“I’ll try and run up for a day or two, before 
the girls go to school,” he promised his sister- 
in-law. “Let me know, as soon as you have 
decided where to send them.” 

Patience was divided in her opinion, as to 
this new plan. It would be lonesome without 
Paul and Hilary; but then, for the time be- 
ing, she would be, to all intents and purposes, 


234 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“Miss Shaw.” Also, Bedelia was not going 
to boarding-school — on the whole, the ar- 
rangement had its advantages. Of course, 
later, she would have her turn at school — Pa- 
tience meant to devote a good deal of her 
winter’s reading to boarding-school stories. 

She told Sextoness Jane so, when that 
person appeared, just before supper time. 

Jane looked impressed. “A lot of things 
keep happening to you folks right along,” she 
observed. “Nothing’s ever happened to me, 
’cept mumps — and things of that sort; you 
wouldn’t call them interesting. The girls to 
home?” 

“They’re ’round on the porch, looking at 
some photos Mr. Oram’s brought over; and 
he’s looking at Hilary’s. Hilary’s going in 
for some other kind of picture taking. I wish 
she’d leave her camera home, when she goes to 
school. Do you want to speak to them about 
anything particular?” 

“I’ll wait a bit,” Jane sat down on the gar- 
den-bench beside Patience. 

“There, he’s gone!” the latter said, as the 
front gate clicked a few moments later. “O 


THE END OF SUMMER 235 


Paul!” she called, “You’re wanted, Paul!” 

“You and Hilary going to be busy to- 
night?” Jane asked, as Paubne came across 
the lawn. 

“Not that I know of.” 

“I ain’t,” Patience remarked. 

“Well,” Jane said, “it ain’t prayer-meeting 
night, and it ain’t young peoples’ night and it 
ain’t choir practice night, so I thought maybe 
you’d like me to take my turn at showing you 
something. Not all the club — like’s not they 
wouldn’t care for it, but if you think they 
would, why, you can show it to them some- 
time.” 

“Just we three then?” Pauline asked. 
“Hilary and I can go.” 

“So can I — if you tell mother you want me 
to,” Patience put in. 

“Is it far?” her sister questioned Jane. 

“A good two miles — we’d best walk — we 
can rest after we get there. Maybe, if you 
like, you’d better ask Tom and Josie. Your 
ma’ll be better satisfied if he goes along, I 
reckon. I’ll come for you at about half-past 


seven. 


236 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“All right, thank you ever so much,” Pau- 
line said, and went to tell Hilary, closely pur- 
sued by Patience. However, Mrs. Shaw 
vetoed Pauline’s proposition that Patience 
should make one of the party. 

“Not every time, my dear,” she explained. 

Promptly at half-past seven Jane ap- 
peared. “All ready?” she said, as the four 
young people came to meet her. “You don’t 
want to go expecting anything out of the com- 
mon. Like’s not, you’ve all seen it a heap 
of times, but maybe not to take particular 
notice of it.” 

She led the way through the garden to the 
lane running past her cottage, where Tobias 
sat in solitary dignity on the doorstep, down 
the lane to where it merged in to what was 
nothing more than a field path. 

“Are we going to the lake?” Hilary asked. 

Jane nodded. 

“But not out on the water,” Josie said. 
“You’re taking us too far below the pier for 
that.” 

Jane smiled quietly. “It’ll be on the water 
— what you’re going to see,” she was getting 


THE END OF SUMMER 237 


a good deal of pleasure out of her small mys- 
tery, and when they reached the low shore, 
fringed with the tall sea-grass, she took her 
party a few steps along it to where an old log 
lay a little back from the water. “I reckon 
we’ll have to wait a hit,” she said, “but it’ll 
be ’long directly.” 

They sat down in a row, the young people 
rather mystified. Apparently the broad ex- 
panse of almost motionless water was quite 
deserted. There was a light breeze blowing 
and the soft swishing of the tiny waves against 
the bank was the only sound to break the still- 
ness; the sky above the long irregular range 
of mountains on the New York side, still wore 
its sunset colors, the lake below sending back 
a faint reflection of them. 

But presently these faded until only the 
afterglow was left, to merge in turn into the 
soft summer twilight, through which the stars 
began to glimpse, one by one. 

The little group had been mostly silent, 
each busy with his or her thoughts; so far as 
the young people were concerned, happy 
thoughts enough; for if the closing of each 


238 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


day brought their summer nearer to its end- 
ing, the fall would bring with it new experi- 
ences, an entering of new scenes. 

“There!” Sextoness Jane broke the silence, 
pointing up the lake, to where a tiny point of 
red showed like a low-hung star through the 
gathering darkness. Moment by moment, 
other lights came into view, silently, steadily, 
until it seemed like some long, gliding sea- 
serpent, creeping down towards them through 
the night. 

“A tow!” Josie cried under her breath. 

They had all seen it, times without number, 
before. The long line of canal boats being 
towed down the lake to the canal below; the 
red lanterns at either end of each boat show- 
ing as they came. But to-night, infected per- 
haps, by the pride, the evident delight, in 
Jane’s voice, the old familiar sight held them 
with the new interest the past months had 
brought to bear upon so many old, familiar 
things. 

“It is — wonderful,” Pauline said at last. 
“It might be a scene from — fairyland, al- 
most.” 


THE END OF SUMMER 239 


“Me — I love to see them come stealing long 
like that through the dark,” Jane said slowly 
and a little hesitatingly. It was odd to be 
telling confidences to anyone except Tobias. 
“I don’t know where they come from, nor 
where they’re a-going to. Many’s the night 
I walk over here just on the chance of seeing 
one. Mostly, this time of year, you’re pretty 
likely to catch one. When I was younger, I 
used to sit and fancy myself going aboard on 
one of them and setting off for strange parts. 
I wasn’t looking to settle down here in Winton 
all my days; but I reckon, maybe, it’s just’s 
well — anyhow, when I got the freedom to 
travel, I’d got out of the notion of it — and 
perhaps, there’s no telling, I might have been 
terribly disappointed. And there ain’t any 
hindrance ’gainst my setting off — in my own 
mind — eveiy time I sits here and watches a 
tow go down the lake. I’ve seen a heap of 
big churches in my travels — it’s mostly easier 
’magining about them — churches are pretty 
much alike I reckon, though I ain’t seen many, 
I’ll admit.” 

No one answered for a moment, but Jane, 


240 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


used to Tobias for a listener, did not mind. 
Then in the darkness, Hilary laid a hand 
softly over the work-worn ones clasped on 
Jane’s lap. It was hard to imagine Jane 
young and full of youthful fancies and long- 
ings; yet years ago there had been a Jane — 
not Sextoness Jane then — who had found 
Winton dull and dreary and had longed to get 
away. But for her, there had been no one to 
wave the magic wand, that should transform 
the little Vermont village into a place filled 
with new and unexplored charms. Never in 
all Jane’s many summers, had she known one 
like this summer of theirs; and for them — the 
wonder was by no means over — the years 
ahead were bright with untold possibilities. 
Hilary sighed for very happiness, wondering 
if she were the same girl who had rocked list- 
lessly in the hammock that June morning, 
protesting that she didn’t care for “half-way” 
things. 

“Tired?” Pauline asked. 

“I was thinking,” her sister answered. 

“Well, the tow’s gone.” Jane got up to 

go. 


THE END OF SUMMER 241 


“I’m ever so glad we came, thank you so 
much, Jane,” Pauline said heartily. 

“I wonder what’ll have happened by the 
time we all see our next tow go down,” Josie 
said, as they started towards home. 

“We may see a good many more than one 
before the general exodus,” her brother an- 
swered. 

“But we won’t have time to come watch for 
them. Oh, Paul, just think, only a little 
while now — ” 

Tom slipped into step with Hilary, a little 
behind the others. “I never supposed the old 
soul had it in her,” he said, glancing to where 
Jane trudged heavily on ahead. “Still, I sup- 
pose she was young — once; though I’ve never 
thought of her being so before.” 

“Yes,” Hilary said. “I wonder, — maybe, 
she’s been better off, after all, right here at 
home. She wouldn’t have got to be Sex- 
toness Jane anywhere else, probably.” 

Tom glanced at her quickly. “Is there a 
hidden meaning — subject to be carefully 
avoided?” 

Hilary laughed. “As you like.” 


242 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“So you and Paul are off on your travels, 
too?” 

“Yes, though I can hardly believe it yet.” 

“And just as glad to go as any of us.” 

“Oh, but we’re coming back — after we’ve 
been taught all manner of necessary things.” 

“Edna’ll be the only one of you girls left 
behind; it’s rough on her.” 

“It certainly is; we’ll all have to write her 
heaps of letters.” 

“Much time there’ll be for letter-writing, 
outside of the home ones,” Tom said. 

“Speaking of time,” Josie turned towards 
them, “we’re going to be busier than any bee 
ever dreamed of being, before or since Dr. 
Watts.” 

They certainly were busy days that fol- 
lowed. So many of the young folks were 
going off that fall that a good many of the 
meetings of “The S. W. F. Club” resolved 
themselves into sewing-bees, for the girl mem- 
bers only. 

“If we’d known how jolly they were, we’d 
have tried them before,” Bell declared one 
morning, dropping down on the rug Pauline 


THE END OF SUMMER 243 


had spread under the trees at one end of the 
parsonage lawn. 

Patience, pulling bastings with a business- 
like air, nodded her curly head wisely. ‘ ‘Mi- 
randa says, folks mostly get ’round to enjoy- 
ing their blessings ’bout the time they come 
to lose them.” 

“Has the all-important question been set- 
tled yet, Paul?” Edna asked, looking up from 
her work. She might not be going away to 
school, but even so, that did not debar one 
from new fall clothes at home. 

“They’re coming to Vergennes with me,” 
Bell said. “Then we can all come home to- 
gether Friday nights.” 

“They’re coming to Boston with me,” Josie 
corrected, “then we’ll be back together for 
Thanksgiving.” 

Shirley, meekly taking her first sewing les- 
sons under Pauline’s instructions, and frankly 
declaring that she didn’t at all like them, 
dropped the hem she was turning. “They’re 
coming to New York with me; and in the be- 
tween-times we’ll have such fun that they’ll 
never want to come home.” 


244 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


Pauline laughed. “It looks as though 
Hilary and I would have a busy winter be- 
tween you all. It is a comfort to know where 
we are going.” 

“Remember!” she warned, when later the 
party broke up. “Four o’clock Friday after- 
noon! Sharp!” 

“Are we going out in a blaze of glory?” 
Bell questioned. 

“You might tell us where we are going, 
now, Paul?” Josie urged. 

Pauline shook her head. “You wait until 
Friday, like good little girls. Mind, you all 
bring wraps; it’ll be chilly coming home.” 

Pauline’s turn was to be the final wind-up 
of the club’s regular outings. No one outside 
the home folks, excepting Tom, had been 
taken into her confidence — it had been neces- 
sary to press him into service. And when, on 
Friday afternoon, the young people gathered 
at the parsonage, all but those named were 
still in the dark. 

Besides the regular members, Mrs. Shaw, 
Mr. Dayre, Mr. Allen, Harry Oram and Pa- 
tience were there; the minister and Dr. Brice 


THE END OF SUMMER 245 

had promised to join the party later if pos- 
sible. 

As a rule, the club picnics were cooperative 
affairs; but to-day the members, by special 
request, arrived empty-handed. Mr. Paul 
Shaw, learning that Pauline’s turn was yet to 
come, had insisted on having a share in it. 

“I am greatly interested in this club,” he 
had explained. “I like results, and I think,” 
he glanced at Hilary’s bright happy face, 
“that the ‘S. W. F. Club’ has achieved at least 
one very good result.” 

And on the morning before the eventful 
Friday, a hamper had arrived from New 
York, the watching of the unpacking of which 
had again transformed Patience, for the time, 
from an interrogation to an exclamation 
point. 

“It’s a beautiful hamper,” she explained to 
Towser. “It truly is — because father says, 
it’s the inner, not the outer, self that makes 
for real beauty, or ugliness; and it certainly 
was the inside of that hamper that counted. 
I wish you were going, Towser. See here, 
suppose you follow on kind of quietly to-mor- 


246 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


row afternoon — don’t show up too soon, and 
I guess I can manage it.” 

Which piece of advice Towser must have 
understood. At any rate, he acted upon it to 
the best of his ability, following the party at a 
discreet distance through the garden and down 
the road towards the lake; and only when the 
halt at the pier came, did he venture near, the 
most insinuating of dogs. 

And so successfully did Patience manage 
it, that when the last boat-load pushed off 
from shore, Towser sat erect on the narrow 
bow seat, blandly surveying his fellow 
voyagers. “He does so love picnics,” Pa- 
tience explained to Mr. Dayre, “and this is 
the last particular one for the season. I kind 
of thought he’d go along and I slipped in a 
little paper of bones.” 

From the boat ahead came the chorus. 
“We’re out on the wide ocean sailing.” 

“Not much!” Bob declared. “I wish we 
were — the water’s quiet as a mill-pond this 
afternoon.” 

For the great lake, appreciating perhaps 
the importance of the occasion, had of its many 


THE END OF SUMMER 247 


moods chosen to wear this afternoon its sweet- 
est, most beguiling one, and lay, a broad 
stretch of sparkling, rippling water, between 
its curving shores. 

Beyond, the range of mountains rose dark 
and somber against the cloud-flecked sky, 
their tops softened by the light haze that told 
of coming autumn. 

And presently, from boat to boat, went the 
call, “We’re going to Fort Edward! Why 
didn’t we guess?” 

“But that’s not in Winton,” Edna pro- 
tested. 

“Of it, if not in it,” Jack Ward assured 
them. 

“Do you reckon you can show us anything 
new about that old fort, Paul Shaw?” Tracy 
demanded. “Why, I could go all over it 
blindfolded.” 

“Not to show the new — to unfold the old,” 
Pauline told him. 

“That sounds like a quotation.” 

“It is — in substance,” Pauline looked across 
her shoulder to where Mr. Allen sat, impart- 
ing information to Harry Oram. 


248 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


“So that’s why you asked the old fellow,” 
Tracy said. “Was that kind?” 

They were rounding the slender point on 
which the tall, white lighthouse stood, and en- 
tering the little cove where visitors to the fort 
usually beached their boats. 

A few rods farther inland, rose the tall, 
grass-covered, circular embankment, sur- 
rounding the crumbling, gray walls, the outer 
shells of the old barracks. 

At the entrance to the enclosure, Tom sud- 
denly stepped ahead, barring the way. “No 
passing within this fort without the counter- 
sign,” he declared. “Martial law, this after- 
noon.” 

It was .Bell who discovered it. “ ‘It’s a 
habit to be happy,’ ” she suggested, and Tom 
drew back for her to enter. But one by one, 
he exacted the password from each. 

Inside, within the shade of those old, gray 
walls, a camp-fire had been built and camp- 
kettle swung, hammocks had been hung under 
the trees and when cushions were scattered 
here and there the one-time fort bore anything 
but a martial air. 


THE END OF SUMMER 249 


But something of the spirit of the past must 
have been in the air that afternoon, or perhaps, 
the spirit of the coming changes; for this pic- 
nic — though by no means lacking in charm — 
was not as gay and filled with light-hearted 
chaff as usual. There was more talking in 
quiet groups, or really serious searching for 
some trace of those long-ago days of storm and 
stress. 

-With the coming of evening, the fire was 
lighted and the cloth laid within range of its 
flickering shadows. The night breeze had 
sprung up and from outside the sloping em- 
bankment they caught the sound of the waves 
breaking on the beach. True to their prom- 
ise, the minister and Dr. Brice appeared at 
the time appointed and were eagerly welcomed 
by the young people. 

Supper was a long, delightful affair that 
night, with much talk of the days when the 
fort had been devoted to far other purposes 
than the present ; and the young people, listen- 
ing to the tales Mr. Allen told in his quiet yet 
strangely vivid way, seemed to hear the slow 
creeping on of the boats outside and to be 


250 


THE S. W. F. CLUB 


listening in the pauses of the wind for the ap- 
proach of the enemy. 

“I’ll take it back, Paul,” Tracy told her, as 
they were repacking the baskets. “Even the 
old fort has developed new interests.” 

“And next summer the ‘S. W. F. Club’ will 
continue its good work,” Jack said. 

Going back, Pauline found herself sitting 
in the stern of one of the boats, beside her fa- 
ther. The club members were singing the 
club song. But Pauline’s thoughts had sud- 
denly gone back to that wet May afternoon. 

She could see the dreary, rain-swept garden, 
hear the beating of the drops on the window- 
panes. How long ago and remote it all 
seemed ; how far from the hopeless discontent, 
the vague longings, the real anxiety of that 
time, she and Hilary had traveled. She 
looked up impulsively. “There’s one thing,” 
she said, “we’ve had one summer that I shall 
always feel would be worth reliving. And 
we’re going to have more of them.” 

“I am glad to hear that,” Mr. Shaw said. 

Pauline looked about her — the lanterns at 
the ends of the boats threw dancing lights out 


THE END OF SUMMER 251 


across the water, no longer quiet; overhead, 
the sky was bright with stars. “Everything 
is so beautiful,” the girl said slowly. “One 
seems to feel it more — every day.” 

“ ‘The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the 
Lord hath made even both of them,’ ” her fa- 
ther quoted gravely. 

Pauline drew a quick breath. “The hear- 
ing ear and the seeing eye” — it was a good 
thought to take with them — out into the new 
life, among the new scenes. One would need 
them everywhere — out in the world, as well as 
in Winton. And then, from the boat just 
ahead, sounded Patience’s clear treble, — 
“ ‘There’s a Good Time Coming.’ ” 














































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